Soap Gets In Your Fangs, Too
by LilLolaBlue
Summary: Rogue wants to leave her past w/the Brotherhood behind her. Under Logan's watchful eye, she's a good girl. But there's a bad man she wants to forget. When Prof. X brings Sabretooth into the fold, Vic's going to make her remember. The hard way.
1. Nostalgia

**SOAP GETS IN YOUR FANGS, TOO.**

**Chapter One: Nostalgia**

**Westchester, New York. X-Institute 1974**

**I: Rogue**

Time has a way of playing little jokes on you that aren't funny.

If you're not a woman like me, you don't know that.

And you know what I wish?

I wish I could laugh at them.

But I don't have that kind of sense of humour.

The Harlequin was never a supervillain, but her horrendous baggage is much worse than mine, and it never seems to bother her when the past comes back to haunt her.

Maybe it's because I'm a lady.

Don't laugh, I am a lady, a genuine Southern belle.

And I do believe life would have been easier for me if I was a heavily-tattooed redheaded Irishwoman from Brooklyn.

The sword cuts both ways.

Because I am a lady, people can find it in their hearts to forgive me some serious transgressions.

Maybe I never came out of a burning building full of barely-alive machine-gunned C of H terrorists who were smoking and toasting in there the same way they soon would be in Hell, laughing like a madman and brandishing the bloody, dripping, severed head of William Styrker's brother and second-in-command John, but I have some horrendous baggage of my own.

I was with the Brotherhood, Mystique is my stepmother, I tried to kill Ms. Marvel, fought the Avengers, and duked it out with the X-Men at the Pentagon.

It's a small world.

The Harlequin's partner, the Comedian, AKA Col. Edward Morgan Blake, USMC Special Forces, Director of Covert Operations for S.H.I.E.L.D, he put a fifty calibre bullet in me, at the time.

I have to say, even considering the powers I had absorbed, that slowed my Mustang down.

Maybe it wasn't the bullet, though, maybe it was just him.

I must say, he is a terribly handsome man, especially toting a fifty calibre machine gun in his bare hands like it was a water pistol.

The man never stopped smoking, or grinning, and when Sabretooth saw him, he took immediate evasive action.

And ran right into Eddie's good friend and Victor's worst enemy, Logan.

But, all is forgiven, now.

I still have the bullet.

But I did repent of my evil ways, and truly, and now, I have a whole new life.

I tried to explain that concept to Trivelino.

That I was no longer the same person who had been a member of the brotherhood, Mystique's stepdaughter, Sabretooth's protégé.

And she gave me a wry New York look over her cigarette and stuck her finger, through my shirt, into the scar that fifty calibre bullet left.

"Sure you ain't, Rogue. Bullshit. Ya know somethin'? There's ain't no whole new you, an' no whole new life. You're the same old you and it's the same old life. Just because you turned over a new leaf, that don't mean you can immediately dissasciate yourself from every thing you said and did in the past. You think that way, you're fuckin' yourself. You'll see."

As it turned out, she was right.

The only problem with a whole new life is that the bad old life has a way of constantly intruding on it.

But, I am a lady, and I can handle most of the obstacles this throws in my path.

I have mastered the art of graciously bearing rebukes and insults, of the apologetic laugh and the little joke to excuse myself, or of heartfelt apologies.

I have learned to forget the names and faces of people I shouldn't have known, and disassociate myself with everything I did with them.

I have even forsaken the woman who was more of a mother to me than my own mother, but, of course, I was forsaken by her, first.

But…

Even though I am a lady, I am still a woman.

And there are things a woman can never forget.

That is why, on one fine, lovely and cool Indian summer day, I began my day at the Institute and found Sabretooth defiantly having a lonely breakfast, shunned by the rest of the team, I took it worse than anyone.

Well, anyone except Logan.

And I asked Logan what he was doing in our midst, and that's when the joke was on me.

Victor Creed was trying to insinuate himself back into the loving arms of the US military and intelligence communities, and with politics as usual being what it is, he was given a second chance.

By his former commanding officer in Vietnam, who had once been his boss when he worked for S.H.I.E.L.D covert, none other than that charming black Irish rogue who smiled at me just the way a man smiles at a woman, right before she shot me.

The Comedian, knowing Victor as well as he did, had sent Sabretooth to the X-Institute to prove his intentions to put the White Hat were back on under the watchful eye of Wolverine.

If he made one mistake, if he got up to his old tricks again, he would be cast out of Uncle Sam's sight, forever.

Which is exactly what Logan was hoping for.

And that was why he was breakfasting with quiet defiance, instead of picking the world's biggest lunchroom brawl of all time.

That was the joke.

Here comes the punchline.

Logan told me he was going to be at the X-Mansion for six months.

I looked over at Victor Creed, again, and this time, he looked back at me.

I died, just a little.

"Rogue, are you alright?" Logan asked me.

Logan.

What the hell am I going to tell him?

Jean tells me that when she gets in a situation where her back is against the wall, she asks herself, "What would Napalm do?"

If it's a good idea, she does it, and if it's ridiculous, at lest she gets a laugh that makes her feel better

Why, why, why can't I be like Liv Napier, who has laughed off all her transgressions and wears them on her sleeve, who's life is like an open book, every page of which is torn and dirty?

"I'm fine, Logan. I just find his presence here…shocking."

Sabretooth heard me, and, probably for the first time since his arrival, not only did he smile, but he started to laugh.

I thought of what Napalm would do.

And I smiled.

"Logan, remember when you told me that no good was going to come of me absorbing any of your powers?"

Logan smiled, too.

"I was wrong?"

"Yes."

_**SNIKT!**_

"Good morning, Victor. It's been what, two years? I would ask how you've been doing, but I do read the newspaper. I know you've hit hard times, but, you must really be scraping the bottom of the barrel if you came slinking back to Eddie Blake, and then you came crawling here."

"I dunno, Stripe. You came crawlin' here, first. Nice claws. They look good on you. So, how close are ya to that little runt?"

I heard Logan swear, and the sound of a chair scraping back, but I was there first, with one set of claws to Sabretooth's throat.

"Victor, don't be crude. I am a lady, remember? So, as a lady, I really must thank you for complementing me on my claws. They do look good on me. And they would look good in you. So stay the fuck out of my way. I may not be able to kill you, sugah, but I can hurt you. Again. And again. And again."

Victor remained unfazed.

"Hey, baby, if that's the only way, I don't give a fuck. I'll take it." He said.

I should have said, "Fuck you."

Instead, I just smiled, demurely, sheathed my claws, and walked away.

I went back to sit with Logan, but stopped on the way to get some breakfast.

Victor Creed was still grinning at me, but at least now, I had my appetite back.

"I hate him. But it's…complicated" I told Logan.

"Rogue, darlin', I know exactly what you mean." He replied.

**II: Victor**

Rogue was trying to play it high and mighty with him, and he could understand her playing it up for the stiffs, but he wasn't going to let her think he was buying it.

He waited until he could get her alone in one of the hallways.

"Hey, wait a minute, there, Stripe. I know I'm not the most popular guy around, but even Jimmy doesn't act like he doesn't know me."

"Go away and leave me alone, Victor. If I wanted to talk to you, I would have, by now."

"Listen, frail, I know you wanna rewrite your history. I wanna rewrite mine, too. You got a sweet deal going on here, and all I want is in on it. I know why Jimmy wants ta kill me. But what did I ever do to you?"

Victor knew how much she hated it when he called her frail.

Rogue popped her impressive set of bone claws, and put them to his throat.

Sabretooth purred deep in his chest, and he could smell how nervous it made her.

That was progress.

"Ya know, baby, I really like you with those claws."

"Save it, Victor! Don't call me frail. I'll cut your fucking head off. No, you wouldn't miss that. Maybe I'll cut your fucking balls off, instead!"

"That's not very ladylike, Stripe."

She sunk the claws in, a little.

It hurt, and he was bleeding, but not much.

"Don't call me Stripe, either! Leave me alone, Victor! I have spent the past two years trying to forget about what you did to me, and before I let you do it again, I'll kill you! And I'll keep killing you until you are dead!"

Rogue sheathed her claws and went on her way.

_Snikt!_

"You know what, bub? You really didn't want me to hear that. You're in a world of shit, now. Asshole."

Some days you just shouldn't bother to haul your ass out of bed.

"Leave it alone, Jimmy. It's not what you think."

"No? Then what the fuck is it, ya goddamn murderin' rapin' no good piece of shit?"

Sabretooth whirled around, with his claws out, too.

He was just about done with this shit.

He poked a claw into the middle of Wolverine's chest as he spoke.

"I know what you're up to, little brother. You wanna make me lose my cool so I lose my shot and get outa your territory! Well, get this, runt. In six months, I'm outa here, I ain't tryin' to knock you outa your spot. And I ain't tryin' to cut in on any of your broads. I just wanna do my time here, and prove I can be a nice guy the same way my little brother's a nice guy. You know, with his claws in everything he can't get his cock into. And, as for Little Miss Magnolia Blossoms, there's some things about that sweet little Southern belle that you don't know, Jimmy. Before you pull my guts out, why don't you ask her about me?"

Victor wanted to laugh at the shocked look on his brother's face, but he just smirked.

"I don't believe you, Vic. You're fulla shit."

"Why? There's lots of frails who wanna piece of me."

"Not Rogue."

"Why? Because she's a lady? She's been with you an' Charlie X for about two years now, but she was with the Brotherhood before that. And I taught her everything she knows. An' I mean everything, Jimmy. What have you taught her that I didn't?"

"Things ain't like that with me an' Rogue. My dance card's a little full, right now."

"I noticed. You get yours, Jimmy. Lots of it. Just leave me alone and let me get mine."

Night had fallen over the X-Institute.

A dark night, lit ominously by the full moon.

Ominously for some of the faculty, who lay awake thinking that the violent and unpredictable Victor Creed, Sabretooth, was roaming the place with impunity, thanks to Charles Xavier's irrepressible belief that people could change.

And roaming the place Vic Creed was.

He rolled in late from a bar crawl, nursing a bad belly full of cheap draft beer, bitter about the quality, or lack thereof, of the broads he ran into.

Jimmy, he was like Pop.

He'd fuck anything with a pussy and a pulse, especially after he had a few beers.

Victor, he was a little pickier.

But, there was an alternative to the horse-faced old whores at the Thruway Tavern.

After all, half the reason he had got back on the good guy train was to live the good life, and start pulling a higher class of tail.

There was a lot of high class tail to be had at Xavier's.

Some of those teenage broads were so incredibly turned on by how big, and bad, and mean ol' Vic Creed was, and the fact they'd been told to not so much as speak to him, well that alone made him the candy they all wanted.

The Harlequin sure was right about telling him to watch where he stuck his cock.

And Napalm wasn't kidding about things being all go, all night long, at the X-Mansion.

Maybe he was minding his P's and Q's because his neck was stuck out for the chop, but nobody else was, that was for damn sure.

Vic kept late nights, so he saw it all.

You could get on that train real close to home, with his brother, the runt.

Victor just couldn't believe the kind of shit Jimmy got away with.

For one thing, he didn't have the opportunity to mind his P's and Q's, because he was too busy servicing half the broads in the place.

Wednesdays he had his standing date with Liv Napier, and whether he kept in at the mansion or in the City, he kept it.

He'd have to be crazy not to.

Napalm had killed Sabretooth twice, but he'd spent the night with her four of five times, and with a horny, hot, homicidal hellcat of an alpha bitch like Trivelino J. Napier, that was a good score.

The only man in the world who could keep her in line was Eddie Blake, and even Vic Creed liked to keep his distance from the Comedian.

Now, as for Jimmy's Monday date, Sabretooth thought The Great and Powerful Miss Jean Grey was a real pain in the ass broad, and he'd bet Jimmy did too, but the stupid little bastard was so in love with her, he wouldn't admit it to himself.

That pissed Victor off.

He didn't like the idea of some frail making a monkey out of his brother, and under normal circumstances, he would have done to her what he did to the other frails who made a fool of Jimmy. But he had to keep his nose clean, so he let it slide.

For now.

And the rest of the week, Jimmy was occupied with his main squeeze, Yukon Mel Reinhardt, AKA Femme Fatale, a genuine Nymph who was a full member of the Frisco Hell's Angels, looked like the Dresden doll on the St. Pauli Girl bottles, and could lift a pickup truck over her head without breaking a sweat.

It really pissed Vic off.

Jimmy sleazed around the place with a beer in his hand and a cigar in his mouth, in undershirts with bloodstains on them, pausing between three-day drunks and all-night screws only to raid the fridge and commandeer the TV. But he could do no wrong, because he was the goddamn Wolverine.

If he ever wanted to ball one of his broads on Charlie X's desk and then wipe his dick off on the curtains, well, that would be alright.

For example, Vic had been watching the Late, Late Movie and having a few beers on the previous Thursday when the Mighty Wolverine rolled in, drunk as a skunk at three in the morning naked from the waist up, with blood up to his fucking elbows and his face looking like ten pounds of raw hamburger.

He started yelling for his old lady to come down the fucking stairs, because he'd had a big, loud, argument with her in front of everybody earlier that night, and gone off half-cocked, and now he was back to finish it.

Yukon Mel came out on the landing in her underwear and told him to come upstairs and do his job before she had to come down there and throw him through the wall.

Jimmy said he'd like to see her try it, and popped his claws.

Victor waited for Scooter to come out and read him the riot act, or maybe Charlie X, but nobody did shit.

He couldn't believe it.

Sabretooth put his beer down.

"Hey, Jimmy, don't be a shithead.'

Snikt!

"What the fuck did you say to me?"

"Jesus, what the fuck happened to your face?"

"It got slammed against a hot griddle."

"Ouch! All the more reason ya shouldn't be in the mood for more punishment. You an' me both know you're right, but ya know how women are. They're always fuckin' right, even when they're not. I don't know your old lady all that well, but she don't seem like the kind of broad who fucks around and makes empty threats. She's gonna come down here, and throw you through the wall. Why don'tcha just give her the oh baby, baby, an' kiss an' make up. It'll feel a lot better than remodelin' the masonry, the hard way. And ya know Scooter will take it outa your pay for the next two fuckin' years." He commented.

See, you had to know how to talk to Jimmy.

"Yeah, you're probably right." He said, looking less like raw hamburger all the time.

Jimmy, he was like Pa, his healing factor was fast as lightening.

The lucky little prick.

He sheathed his claws and staggered towards the stairs.

"What the fuck happened to you, Daddy? You didn't kill any innocent people, did you?" the frail said.

Daddy?

Jesus holy shit Christ, she calls him Daddy?

Fucking hell, the dirty little runt prick.

Just like Pa.

"No, darlin', I didn't kill anybody. I'm sorry. I guess I'm just a mean ol' man."

"You sure are, Daddy. C'mon, let's take a bath an' go to bed. We ain't got much night left."

You know what it was?

It was un-fucking-believable.

Jimmy could get away with shit like that, and nobody would say a fucking word to him, and meanwhile, if Vic so much as shoved his own brother in the kitchen or took a second look at the legion of hot young frails that were coming out of every corner of this dump, he was going to get shitcanned?

And these are supposed to be the good guys?

You wouldn't know it when the lights go off.

The kids in residence sure took advantage of the fact that ol' Chuck X had a tendency to forget about fucking.

They didn't.

All night you heard doors opening and closing and you saw teenage mutants going from room to room, in all the stages of undress from rumpled to bare-ass naked, toting armfuls of records and bags of weed and six packs of beer and bottles of whiskey.

Popping birth control pills and tearing the wrappers on Trojans open with their teeth

By the time it got to be about two in the morning, there was so much fucking going on, the whole place smelled like a goddamn whorehouse.

Not that the faculty were all having a cup of tea and hitting the sack.

Jimmy wasn't the only one with his cock out and his door locked.

Oh no.

Hank McCoy had a goddamn parade of women going in and out of his rooms.

Some nights one would leave and an hour later another one would show up.

They were all mutants, and Hank liked his in all sizes and shapes and colours, and things like fur and scales and feathers didn't seem to bother him.

Vic imagined the frails with fur and scales and feathers and wings didn't have a lot of other places to go to get laid, and the ones who could pass easier, and looked like ordinary humans, well, Beast was a kick they hadn't tried.

Hell, one night Tony Stark showed up, walked through the common room and said hello to him quite casually before heading in the direction of Storm's rooms, and Vic still couldn't figure out what the hell Emma saw in Scooter, she was around every Monday.

Yeah, it was a real bitch, everybody was fucking but him.

Because he was being a good boy.

Well, pretty much.

That one time he went into his bedroom and there were two frails that were too damn cute to be a minute over 17 waiting for him with a case of cold beer, both of them wearing nothing but a smile, well, shit, what else was he going to do?

Teach them how to play Poker?

That was a trick it was too risky to repeat.

What he was about to do was risky as hell, but Sabretooth knew himself.

If he didn't get down to getting laid on a regular basis pretty soon, he was just going to up and fucking kill somebody.

Maybe a whole shitload of somebodies.

So, what he was going to have to do was what he'd done by trying this White Hat bullshit on in the first place.

Take a fucking chance.

**III: Rogue**

Not only was the joke on me, but I was kidding myself.

It was, as it so happened, technically a Wednesday, it became so at midnight when our peace and quiet was disturbed by the dramatic entrance of the Harlequin, still in costume.

A costume that was torn in several places so you could see body armor and tattoos, with three bullet holes in the chest.

She wiped her nose, which was dripping blood, but nowhere near enough to account for the fact that she was drenched in the stuff.

She flopped onto the sofa in the common room, where Logan was sitting at one end watching the Maple Leafs, and Victor was sitting on the other.

"Christ in heaven, whatta fuckin' night! Lookit my costume. I mean, that's the goddamn end of this fuckin' costume. Who's got a beer for me? Thanks, Vic. Ya know what, Logan? I'm goin upstairs an' take a goddamn bath. I'll be seein' you later."

"Are ya hurt, darlin'?"

"Shit, I ain't hurt that bad. Ya know what I mean?"

She stood up and one of the bullets fell out of her costume.

Victor picked it up.

".357?" he asked.

"Yeah. Sure is. An' I woulda let the cocksucker live if all he did was shoot me, but you know while I was lying on my back because I was on my ass from the impact, the fucker hadda get on top of me?"

Liv cracked the beer, dank half of it, belched, and laughed.

"Yeah, he fucked up on that one. Fucked up real bad. None of this is my blood."

"I figured that. What did you do to him?"

"Vic, you don't want to know that."

"Sure I do, Jimmy. What did you do, Red? Chop his dick off?"

"Nope. Maybe I would if I'd been thinkin'. But I wasn't thinkin'. I lost my shit, an' I just went crazy on him. I just started hittin' him, an' bashin' him, an' kickin' him; I beat the motherfucker to a pulp. I think I still woulda let him live, but he went for his gun and shot me in the back. Uh-huh. I'm one of these dumb motherfuckers who only wears a chest plate, like my fuckin' armor don't go all the way around? What a fuckin' nimrod asshole cocksucker, yunno? I got my machete out and turned around and laid him open from neck to nuts. Son of a bitch ain't gonna get any deader than he was when I left him, that's' for goddam sure. What a night. And I almost went a month without havin' ta kill somebody. Oh well. Fuck it."

With that, she went upstairs.

Logan went after her, at the end of the game, and when they went to bed, I went to bed.

It doesn't really matter that my room isn't close to Logan's, when he and Liv hit the sheets, they hit them hard.

Scott and Jean's bedroom is adjacent to Logan's, and Scott told me that he had to ask Logan to move his bed to the far wall or he and Jean would never get a night of sleep, and even so, sometimes pictures fall off their wall.

On Wednesdays, though, Scott and Jean go to the city and have a night out and stay in a motel.

Because you just can't be that close to the blast zone, and live.

And I lay there, sleepless, listening to the carnal concerto coming from Logan's rooms as he hit Liv Napier a hell of a lot harder than bullets from a .357 and she hit back.

Do you know what kind of hell I live in?

Contact with me, with my skin, is deadly.

Without going into a lengthy explanation of my powers, and what they do, suffice it to say I can kill a man by touching him for too long, so, unless we're talking about Superman, or someone with extreme healing ability, sex is out of the question.

I can touch Logan.

I can touch Logan all day; his healing factor is such that my touch doesn't bother him; and I have already had unfortunate occasion to absorb his powers.

As for assuming his personality, Logan's psi blocks are so massive even he can't penetrate some of them, and neither can Charles or Jean.

He doesn't credit them to the Weapon X program, he credits them to the way his father raised him.

The same father who raised his brother, another man involved in the Weapon X program.

Another man I can't possibly seriously harm or kill.

Another man who used to consider me his protégé.

A man I was even closer to than I am to Logan.

Victor Creed.

I knew it was only a matter of time, before he came to me, but I hated Victor, hated him for picking Wednesday night.

But one thing about the sons of Black Tom Logan, they can always smell when there's blood in the water.

Then again, maybe Victor was lying in his bed, listening to it, and he just couldn't stand it, either.

But make no mistake, I hated him, hated him right down to the marrow of his feral bones when, quietly as a housecat, he slipped in the door.

"Ah thought you'd show up here, soon enough, you son of a bitch! You've got a lot of fucking nerve! Why don't you just git the hail outa mah room, Victor Creed!"

Victor just smiled.

I could have popped the claws and sunk them into his chest, and he would have laughed at me.

He's a very strange man, Victor Creed.

"You gonna make me?" he asked.

Maybe he wanted me to pop the claws; after all, it's not as if I could kill him.

No, what I could do to him without so much as lifting a finger was much, much worse?

"Make you? All ah have to do is scream for help. Not somethin' I could have done when ah was with the Brotherhood. I told my step-mama all about you, what you done to me an' all she did was laugh. It's not right, Victor."

"Awww, me and Mystique are old news."

"And so are we, Victor. Old news. Do you know how long it took me to get over what you done to me, you big, mean, evil son of a bitch? Two years, Creed!"

Now I was starting to get angry, but that's alright.

Victor likes it when I'm angry.

You know, it really wasn't right, it wasn't right at all.

I was barely legal, and Victor was close to a hundred, and he had once been my stepmother's lover, and he was Sabretooth, for God's sake, and I was a virgin, literally untouched by the hands of man.

It may not have been right, but I have to tell you the truth.

I was evasive when Logan asked me if there had ever been anything between me and Sabretooth, and I may try to make it sound like I was unwilling, but those are lies.

Damned lies.

Because Victor did not come to my bed and rape me, or seduce me with callous force and brutality.

No, it was a slow kind of seduction where he led me further and further down the path towards what I really wanted from him, so gradually that I never had the time to really think about whether it was right or wrong.

Victor Creed was to me kind of what Eddie Blake was to Liv Napier.

I knew that I wanted him, I knew I could have him, and I told myself a lot of things along the way to make it alright.

It's alright, I only let him touch me.

It's alright, I only touched him.

It's alright, all he did was put his mouth on me.

It's alright, all I did was put my mouth on him.

It's alright, we only had sex that one time, it's alright we only get it on once a week.

It's alright, it's alright if we make love every night, it's alright if we fuck all night long.

it's alright because he's big, and strong and bad and blond, and I want him; he's my Beast and I'm his Beauty, he's my lion.

It's alright because it has to be alright.

Because he's the Devil I know, because I know that Victor isn't going to hurt me, and that I'm not going to hurt him.

Because Victor calls most women frail, but he never called me that.

Because he was the man who taught me how to survive.

Because he was the man who taught me how to kill.

Because, God help me, I used to love to fuck him.

I love the way he purrs like a big cat, and winds his hands around in my hair while I'm sucking his cock. I love the way his slightly rough tongue feels when he's licking me, the way he never sinks his teeth into me although he could, I love having his big, leonine, muscular body between my legs, on top of me, I love the way it feels when he's inside me, he's big, but I like that.

I like it, like it, yes I do.

Rape?

If Vic decided he didn't want me, anymore, I would have raped him.

That's why I hated him so much, just then.

Because he was only thing from my old life that I really missed, that I still sometimes felt I could never get used to being without.

Life without Victor was very much like a night without stars.

And now that he was in my life again, the night was as bright as day.

"What? What the fuck did you just say to me? After every fuckin' thing I did for you? Don't you talk to me like that! There's nobody here but me to hear your mouth, don't you fucking dare!"

Victor was starting to get angry, but that's alright.

I like Victor when he's angry.

And he was just getting started.

"Goddamn you, ya little bitch! I'm not my goddamn sentimental asshole brother who goes goofy over every third frail he lays cock to! You know that! An' Raven, she was your mother like a fuckin cuckoo lays eggs in another bird's nest! She was all fuckin' done with you, ya know! You woulda been either on your ass or dead if I hadn't fuckin' stepped in! You oughta fucking know If I come back to a woman, that means she's got something I want. Something I need. I don't let what I need get past me, and I sure as fuck don't ever let go of somethin' I want! You think you can just say thanks, and go? Lemme tell you somethin', baby. You're mine. When I mark you, you're mine until I kill you, because anybody else who tries, they won't live long enough to try it twice! So, don't you dare fuckin' talk to me like you're not my girl when you're not puttin' it on for those cocksuckers! I could give less of a shit what you fuckin' do or don't fuckin' do with alla these goddamn boys. Because you and I know you're _mine_. Mine! Did you fuckin' think I was gonna let you forget that? The fuckin' hell I will!"

Victor was right by the bed now, looming over me, snarling his words like an angry lion.

But I was still mad.

"Victor, you don't understand! Do you think it's easy to be me? You have other women. Forget about you? That's my fucking problem, Victor. I can't forget you. Not even for a day, and especially not at night. Maybe, maybe if I could have other men it would have been easy for me to forget you. But I don't have that luxury. No, I take that back. I could have slept with your brother. But, not only am I a lady, who wouldn't do such a thing, I know that would hurt and humiliate you. And besides, you son of a bitch, you're goddamn right you put your mark on me! It's you I want, Victor. It's you. Do you know what that's like? Because I like it here. I believe in Charles' vision. Your brother's been good to me; he's really made me feel like this is my home. I have tried so hard. But I've had two years of treadin' the upward path, of puttin' aside my wicked ways. Two years of nice, quiet, celibate affairs with goddamn boys. Two years lyin' in this cold bed, between these cold sheets, tryin' to forget that once upon a time I had a man that my touch didn't hurt an' couldn't kill! I just about forgot, an' now you're gonna come back, here, for a couple of months, and ring all my bells, and bring it all back again, and then tip your fucking hat and five me a falsh of fang and go! The hell you are, Vic! We are like Beauty and the Beast, like you always used to say, but I'm the Beast, not you. And when you leave me, this time, I will pine away and die!"

Victor smiled; his anger seemed to evaporate.

"Is that what kinda bee you got in your bonnet, baby? Shit, that's no trouble at all. Don't be so dramatic. Jesus, I forget how young you are. You really don't know how things are, do you? You know what the difference is between the bad guys and the good guys? The color of their uniforms and who signs their paycheck. Look at me an' Jimmy? How different are we? Not as much as he likes to think You've got to know both of us. We had different mothers, but our Pa is our Pa. An' I practically raised that little shit after Pa had to go on the lam for about ten years. We ate at the same table, and we worked side by side an' fought side by side. He's my fucking brother, you understand that? Besides, listen, baby, whether I stay with the White Hats or put the Black Hat back on, nobody in this business cares what you do in the dark as long as it never sees the light of day. What I'm gettin' at is, there's no reason after I leave here that you an' me gotta say goodbye. I just got done tellin' you, Stripe, you're mine. There ain't no goodbye."

Do you know I had never thought of that?

Because I'm a lady.

Jesus Christ.

"You never thought of that?"

"I hate you, Victor! I hate you so much right now! If that's the way it is, where the fuck were you for two years?"

"I hadda let you get yourself set up as one of the White Hats, didn't I? An' I was around. Here an' there. You had your nose in the air, didn't you?" he chuckled.

"It's not funny! I never stopped thinking about you! Never!"

"Hey, baby, trust me, you were never far from my mind. For one think, I like a mask broad. Things work out better. For another, there was always somethin' about you, Stripe. You were never just another fuckin' frail. I could smell it on you, even after Raven decide she was tired of you. Maybe it is that you're a genuine lady. Maybe it's how well you learned to live, how you learned to kill. Not to mention, it don't hurt when you touch me. It just sorta tingles a little. In a good way. Especially on my cock. That's real nice, baby. Sometimes I think about how you never close your eyes while you're suckin' my dick, you just look up at me with this look of misty-eyed pleasure on your face, like I could take all day to come and you wouldn't give a shit. I miss that."

You know what that look is, Victor?

It's gratitude.

God save me.

And lust.

God save you.

Well, I had to go through the motion of getting out of bed and trying to slap him, and all I had on was a tank top and panties.

"You dirty son of a bitch!"

Victor took the opportunity to haul me into his arms.

"Yeah, I am. An' you love it."

I suppose his whole body was tingling all over, because mine sure as hell was.

I smacked him anyway.

"Hey. No rough stuff, Stripe. That's for business."

"No. That's for leaving me twist in the wind for two years!"

"Two years, huh? That's a long time for a hot-blooded little thing like you, ain't it, sweetheart? I guess I'm gonna be feelin this in the morning. Now tell me the truth, in your voice all honeysuckle an' magnolias. You don't really wanna smack me, do you, baby?"

"No, Sugah. I don't."

"So, ya really missed me, huh?"

"You're about to find out how much."

Victor laughed, and he smiled at me in a way that made my knees turn to water.

"Ya know what? I think you're wearin' too many clothes for this party."

Victor extended one claw, and sliced off the offending garments.

In that moment, I was lost.

"Now that's more like it."

He strutted over to my bed like he owned the world, and took his time getting undressed before he lay down.

"I think it's about time for me ta see that look on your face, again, ain't it, Stripe?"

"Oh, no, sugah. Time for me to teach you to be a gentleman. Ladies first."

Victor laughed.

"What year was it I met you in, baby?"

"Sixty-nine?"

"Good idea."

You know all those songs about doing it all night long?

Well, have you ever actually done it all night long?

Now, have you ever actually done it al night long with a feral mutant?

Or a woman who hasn't touched a man in two years?

I suppose I don't have to tell you that we were tired.

I slept through breakfast.

So did Victor, but Logan was probably the only one who noticed that.

When lunchtime came around, and I was still AWOL, Scott came to my room to check on me.

Victor doesn't lock doors.

He doesn't care if people know what he does.

I woke up because it was a bright, sunshiny day, and when Scott opened the door he let the day in.

For once, I woke up smiling, and still half-asleep, I couldn't figure out why Scott had an expression of shock, and perhaps even horror on his face, until I heard a growl coming from beside me, and felt Victor tighten his grasp.

"What the fuck are you lookin' at, Scooter?" he snarled.

"It's alright, Vic. I imagine he came to wake me because we've slept in."

When you are a lady, a Southern lady, you learn to be poised and gracious under any circumstance.

Even when your boss catches you asleep till noon, naked in the arms of a feral mutant who is almost as low in his estimation as Magneto.

Poor Scott.

I could see he was looking around the room for a rape to have happened, but the way I was just lying lazily in Sabretooth's arms, and the way my words and the hand I gently put on his chest seemed to dull Victor's anger, that hope vanished.

Clearly, I had consented to my ravishing.

Perhaps just as clearly, not for the first time.

"Huh? Fuck that shit, I never sleep in."

Victor grabbed my alarm clock.

"Jesus Holy Shit Christ, Stripe, it's almost lunchtime! Shit! Oooo, fuck, my back. Lemme tellya Scooter, this morning, I feel like I'm a hundred. One side, I really gotta piss."

He picked his boxers up off the floor, put them on, and pushed his way out the door past Scottl

On his way down the hallway, I saw Victor pound on Logan's door.

"Rise an' crawl, Jimmy! Grub's onna table."

"You eat mine, Vic. I'm dead." Came the muffled reply.

Then, Logan staggered out of his bedroom.

"Jesus Jumpin' Goddam Christ, what a fuckin' night. Most people take three bullets in the chest, it slows them down. Not Napalm. Why do you look so fuckin' short, asshole?"

"Fuck you, stumpy. It's because I can't stand up straight, runt. If I could get my spine ta crack…"

"You mean like this?"

CRAAAAAACK!

"OWWW! MOTHERFUCKER, THAT HURT!"

"So? You're standin' up straight, now, ain'y you, Vic."

"Yeah, yeah. You look like I feel, Jimmy."

"I hope not."

Napalm strolled out of Logan's room, looking as lazy and happy and chipper as I did, whistling as she leered at Scott and jauntily zipped her fly.

"Good afternoon' Scooter Pie."

She pushed past the sons of Black Tom Logan.

"One side there, old timers. I'm starving this mornin', God damn!"

Eventually, it was just me and Scott, standing in the doorway.

"Victor and I became acquainted when we were both with the Brotherhood. I won't be indiscreet." I explained.

Scott was trying to regain his composure.

"Well, Rogue, that's your personal business. As long as it doesn't carry over into your work, I have nothing to say."

Of course he had nothing to say.

He's sleeping with the White Queen of the Hellfire Club once a week.

Downstairs, Victor and Logan were sitting as far from each other as they could, lunch was in progress and Napalm was on the phone.

"…an' I got these huge bruises all over my chest, Eddie. I woke up this morning and forgot I got shot last night an' started yellin' at Logan…yeah, I'm gonna have Hank check me out…well you can't kill the asshole a second time, I left him there about as dead as he was ever gonna get…what, I hafta have you babysit me every time I put on the suit? Fuck you, Eddie…yeah, yeah, yeah…okay, I will, I promise…What the hell?"

Beast was looking at the bruise you could see.

"That looks like the rest of the week off to me."

"I know you heard that, Eddie. Right after I eat. Okay, I will. Sure I will. No, fuck that shit, I'll just be on top. Fuck yeah, everybody heard me. You want me to say it louder…because I'll make a fuckin' formal announcement. Whaddya want me to do, Eddie? Get a tattoo on my hip with an arrow that says "Eddie Blake was here. You ain't a patch on his ass?"…huh….okay…nothin'…he's behavin' himself…yeah, well, it's better to have the real sons of bitches on your side than on the other side…okay. You gonna take good care of me, boss…I thought so…yeah, I'll see youse tonight."

She hung up.

Just like I usually do on Wednesdays, I sat with Jean and Napalm.

I never miss Napalm's Funny Dirty Story of the Week.

"Listen to dis one, Jean. You ain't gonna believe dis one. So I'm in my office at NYU, and I've been up two nights straight, between woik and the lab. Ya know how it is during the full moon. So I had like t'ree, four hours until my next class ta teach, so I pulled down the Murphy bed, an' I just got down to my shorts and undershoit, an' as soon as my head hidda pillow, boom, I was out. So who shows up but Tony? I mean how does he get into my office? Pick the lock? How does he know I'm in bed, in my undaweah? I wake up, he's in bed with me, an' he's naked, an' he's woikin on gettin' me naked. So I ask him, yunno, Tony, what the fuck. An' he says, yunno, he wants ta surprise me. Says I ain;t spontaneous enough. Well, lemme tellya, I'm surprised. I'm surprised he didn't lock the door. Pete Parker comes in, an, here's the funny part. Dis is how well Pete knows me, after a year of bein' my assistant. He puts the papers down on my desk, reminds me that I got class at four, says "Ooops" and leaves. I got him trained. Anyway, Pete locks the door. So I'm locked in with Tony. Who's feelin' spontaneous. Now, this is where it starts ta get good…."


	2. Basic Training

**Chapter Two: Basic Training**

**New York City, Winter, 1970**

**I: Rogue**

Had you passed by a certain window on a frosty day in January, you wouldn't have thought the two women sitting on the window seat of said window in the stately house on Central Park West even knew each other.

They were young women. The brown haired woman with the white streak in her hair was 18, the redhead, 20.

They were playing chess.

The younger girl wore a long-sleeved grey babydoll jersey, a brown gauzy scarf, brown gloves and a long brown voile brown skirt, with handmade woollen tights and chic brown suede Chelsea boots on, underneath.

She wore a lavender scent, and her freshly washed hair was neatly combed.

The redhead wore had on an OD undershirt, and a worn BDU shirt that identified her as a First Sergeant in the Marines. It had fresh engine grease and old, brownish, faded bloodstains on it. Under the vest she wore a .45 calibre automatic in a shoulder holster, and the undershirt was stained with sweat and motor oil.

Her outfit terminated in a pair of dirty, rumpled Levi's and a pair of thick socks and combat boots.

Under the jeans, she had a buck knife strapped to her thigh and a snub-nosed Bulldog .45 calibre revolver in an ankle holster.

She smelled of sweat, motor oil, blood, and booze, and she didn't look to have taken a bath in a long time, maybe a week.

Her long ponytails looked greasy, there were telltale white streaks on the front of he jeans that her friend wasn't going to mention, and her tattooed hands were filthy, two fingers on one taped together because of a broken knuckle.

The effect was topped off by a fading shiner on one eye, and a smudge of grease on the cheek.

You wouldn't think that the disordered redhead would be anybody's idol, fidgeting with her dog tags as she thought, but the younger girl envied her every tattoo, ever scar, and every grease spot.

"Yeah, my big mission today is to do the shopping." Rogue was complaining.

"That reminds me. I gotta make a side trip to buy s'more beer."

It was ten in the morning, and the redhead was drinking a 16-ounce can of Coors, and she had a six pack with five left sitting under the bench.

"How were the Troubles?"

"Bad."

"So I heard. Is the Buick totalled?"

"Naaah. I fixed 'er, already. It was all superficial body work. The wall I run into, that's what was totalled."

"Liv, don't you think you ought to slow down a little?" Rogue suggested.

Liv just laughed.

"Nope."

"But don't you care if you live or you die?"

"You got it in one."

"But how can you feel that way? You have so much to live for!"

"Yeah. I do. But I also have so much to die for. So I'm gonna wait an' see what happens. Like the song says, I'll eat when I'm hungry and drink when I'm dry and if it don't kill me I'll live till I die."

Liv finished her beer, lit a cigarette, and popped a new one.

Rogue was beginning to think Erik was right, that the reason why Liv was a burned-out, shell-shocked, degenerate alcoholic was a case of too much, too soon.

"Liv, you're a brilliant scientist, an excellent mask, Level 7 Covert with S.H.I.E.L.D, a decorated veteran, you've got friends who love you, and you've got a man counting on your being here when he comes back from Vietnam, not to mention whoever else you have stashed all over the City. You've survived things that would have killed mutants and empowered masks, alike. Why would you want to die?"

Liv shrugged.

"I don't want to. I just don't care if I do, anymore. I hit the streets at 13, hit them in a mask at 16, and the street has hit me back pretty hard. Every night I go out looking for something even I don't know what it is, but I'll know it when I find it. Maybe it's victory, maybe it's death, I just don't know. Like I said, I'm just gonna keep hittin' it harder for every time it hits me, an' I'll find out. Checkmate."

"What?"

"Checkmate, Rogue. Jesus, I been drunk since last night and I ain't slept and I'm more onna ball than you are. Are you alright?"

"Peachy."

"Yeah, you look it. You hung up, again?"

"I am hung up all the time. I may be a lady, but I'm still a woman. Not that I can do a thing about it. Do you have any more of those books you're not using?"

"I brought you a whole new box. The absolute filthiest. Guaranteed to make you go off like a Roman candle, maybe even before you can get your hand down your panties. They're in my car."

Rogue sighed, regretfully.

"What a world. You want to play again?"

"I got four beers left. Why not?"

Rogue, who preferred not to think of or divulge her real name to anyone, had been born into a once grand family in Mississippi, who now lived in a proud sort of genteel poverty 18 years earlier.

Her parents were gone, and there had never been an explanation as to where; they were simply gone, and they were not spoken about. She was raised by an aunt and a series of other relatives who didn't seem to want her around.

She came from what only another Southerner would be able to understand was a very good family, and spent her formative years brought up as genteel Southern belle, a real lady.

Even though she had never been close to any of her family members, she was grateful to them for that upbringing, because it had enabled her to withstand her mutation with grace and quiet dignity.

Rogue always thought it was that grace and quiet dignity that made Mystique take an interest in her.

She had lived, quite happily, in the lavish Manhattan home shared by Mystique and Magneto at Central Park West, in Manhattan, since she was 14.

She had been allowed, in an honorary fashion, to join the Brotherhood at 16, but neither of her surrogate parents took her seriously as a potential mask.

She was too young, she was untrained, her powers were un-manageable.

It was always the same thing.

Wait and see.

Maybe next year.

However, after witnessing the rapid disintegration of what little stability Liv had, since her alleged 14 month tour with the Marines in Germany, doing non-combat work for Operation Wrath of God, she began to see Erik's point.

Come springtime, Liv took off for Canada with an old army buddy of hers, and when she said good-bye to Rogue, it sounded final.

It was all rather confusing for Rogue.

She wanted to get into the mask game, and she knew that there were plenty of masks of both sides of the cape that were far less troubled than Trivelino.

But even so…

Rogue decided that she would wait for an appropriate mentor to come along, someone who would shield her from the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune that had so pierced Liv, until she was able to hold her own.

Until then?

Well, someone had to buy the groceries.

**Westchester, County, New York. Thruway Tavern, Fall 1970**

**II: Victor**

Jimmy gave him that look, that usual look of barely disguised loathing.

And, Victor grinned back at it, the way he always did.

_Yeah, yeah, you're the Big Bad Wolverine. You'll always be my little brother Jimmy, to me._

"What?" the runt immediately asked, when Victor said down.

"How's Red? I hear it was bad."

Red was Sabretooth's nickname for the Harlequin.

"Is that what this is about? Listen, Vic, Eddie was serious about that shit. You'd better stay away from her. And she did kill you. Twice."

"Bullshit. Red knew it wouldn't kill me either time. Not permanently. And I ain't makin' no play for her. But I gotta right to know. I'm walkin' because of Red. I owe her. I'll always owe her. So, I think I gotta right to know."

"I guess you thought it was bad when you woke up in a pool of your own blood with Alfred sewin' your legs back on an' Liv lyin' unconscious in the corner, with the Bat getting' ready ta rush her to the hospital, huh?"

"It got worse?"

"Yeah. But she's better, now. We're all keepin' an eye on her."

"How long you think that's gonna work?"

"As long as it has to. You got a funny look on your face. Like you're about to do something crazy. What is it?"

"Stripe."

"Stripe?"

"Rogue. She hasn't got a name. She's been brought up by Erik and Raven. Mutant. Wants in the business. But she's got problems. Red-sized problems. I don't think I wanna see her go that way. She won't survive it. But she's 18, by now. Thinks she knows it all. If she hits the street and the street hits back…I just don't wanna see Stripe go that way. She's a good kid. She's a real lady. Like women used to be, when you and me were young."

"Victor, do I have to remind you that it's not good for a woman, unless she's damn near indestructible, for me, and especially not you, to get involved in her life?"

"She could be. If Stripe touches a normal human, that's it. They're toast. If she touches a mutant, she absorbs some of their memories and their powers. Then they're toast. Now I already know she couldn't toast me. But if she was a feral, too, well she'd be damn near indestructible. And the kid needs somebody to train her. You know what I mean, Jimmy."

"I know exactly what you mean, Vic. I can't believe I'm hearin' it from you, but, I know what you mean. What about the girl? How does she feel about it?"

"She knows me. Trusts me."

"Likes you? Even though I know this has nothin' to do with you findin' some pretty young girl who has a crush on you and doesn't know it yet, but that you're the only man in the world who can ever touch her without her killin' you?"

"Jimmy, do the words 'Mel Reinhardt' mean anything to you? I talked to Pa. He told me you let an untrained Nymph at you, and when he found you, you were naked and raving in the woods, craving pieces outa yourself with your claws."

Wolverine chuckled.

"Yeah. And then when she was drunk, Liv threatened to cut my head off with her adamantium machete and throw it far enough that my body would die before it could find it."

"These frails, nowadays, huh, Jimmy?"

"I never thought I'd live to see crazy shit like the past twenty years, that's for sure. Be careful, Vic. Or you'll be the next one in the woods takin' yourself apart. Don't forget Matsuko."

A shadow of pain drifted across Sabretooth's face.

"Not fuckin' likely, runt. Matsuko, she was sweet and helpless. Even now, that ain't Stripe. But, by the time I get done with her, I won't be able to kill her. You'll see."

They had one more drink, together, and Sabretooth took his leave.

Wolverine questioned his brother's logic in creating a weapon that was his equal, or better, but, then again, he wasn't sure if that was possible.

And if it was, maybe that would be for the best.

He had another drink.

**New York City. Fall, 1970**

**II: Rogue**

"Hello! I'm home! I'm carrying six bags of groceries! A little help might be nice! Hello!"

Rogue saw a battered duffel bag sitting in the foyer.

And she heard a familiar laugh coming from the kitchen.

That could only mean one thing.

He was back.

"He", of course, was Victor Creed.

Also known as Sabretooth, and occasionally, Major Victor Creed, USMC, Special Forces, or even Special Agent Victor Creed, Weapon X.

Rogue liked to tell herself it was little schoolgirl crush she had on him, but as Mr. Creed made regular appearances in her erotic fantasies, and her erotic dreams, it was a little more than that.

Oh well.

Nothing would ever come of it.

That was a hard thing to accept with grace and quiet dignity, and privately, Rogue sometimes threw tantrums, but, there wasn't anything she could do about it.

Victor was nominally a member of the Brotherhood, but he didn't really owe allegiance to the goodguys or the badguys; he went with whoever was offering the best deal for his services at the time.

Apparently, Uncle Sam wasn't offering him much.

Rogue came into the kitchen with the groceries.

"…lousy motherfuckers. I mean, that was one hell of a piece of shit fucking war, Erik. I spent two goddam years manning that black ops boot camp in a Third World toilet of a jungle in South America, and then 14 gorgeous fuckin' months under heavy fire with goddam Operation Wrath of God for fuck's sake, and they still won't gimme my promotion? I'll tell you what. If Eddie hadn't been on his ass when I was demobbed, they wouldn't have fucked me like this. I'll bet somebody paid that broad to cut his face open with a dirty bottle. Jee-ziz Christ!"

Rogue put the groceries on the table.

"Hi, Mr. Creed." She said.

When Rogue had first come to live with Erik and Raven, Mr. Creed had been with the Brotherhood, and he had left only because the G made him some very interesting offers to help them with their Vietnam quagmire.

Offers they had apparently gone back on.

"There she is!"

Rogue looked one way and then the other to figure out who Mr. Creed was grinning at, and then she realised it was her.

"Me?"

"Yeah, you. You're 18 now, right?"

Rogue just nodded.

"Good. Because I've got plans for you."

Victor had given her the only nickname she ever had, he called her Stripe because of her lock of white hair.

Before he left for Vietnam, when he was temporarily living with Erik and Raven, he was always awake at night when she was; they used to watch TV together, and, sometimes, he'd take her to Grossmann's at three in the morning to eat.

That wasn't exactly the basis of him having plans for her, but Rogue was so eager for something to happen in her life, she didn't care.

"What kind of plans, Victor?"

Trust Mama to interrupt.

"Take it easy, Raven. What I mean is, I think Stripe's a lot more like her buddy Liv Napier than either of you wanna admit. An' when I say that, I mean her potential to be a real serious fuckin' mask, in addition to her potential to get roughed up, bad, trying. I mean, Christ, Erik, you got morons like that ugly Toad asshole and that fuckin' half-wit Cain Marko out there bein' operatives in the field, an' you got Stripe buyin' the groceries! She's gonna get into alla the trouble you don't want her to if you keep treatin' her like she's a dumb kid."

"I see you've been thinking about this, Victor."

"Damn straight I have. You know why Liv's so fucked up? Because Jack hadda give her up when she was a kid, an' he couldn't train her. And what the fuck would the Bat know? Now, if Eddie had been trainin' her right from the start, that woulda saved both of them a lotta years of abuse, misery an' bullshit. She barely came back alive from her sojourn in the Great White North, and she wouldn't be here, right now, under the vigilant eyes of the Bat and Eddie and so on if it wasn't for the runt going out of his way to reel her in. Now, I want you to let me train Stripe. Take her upstate, to the compound. Give me a year, a fuckin' year, an' I'll give you a mask who can take on the X-Men, the Avengers, an' S.H.I.E.L.D, or join' em, or both. Because, let's face it. Pretty soon she's gonna hit that street to prove to you and everybody else she can, whether you like it or not. But Stripe isn't Napalm. She's not from the street. She's a lady, a real lady, like what a lady was when I was a boy. She won't be able to take what Napalm took. Hell, she shouldn't have had to take it. Neither should Stripe."

If it wouldn't have half-killed him, Rogue could have kissed Mr. Creed.

"Can I do it? Can I?" she asked

"Victor, you don't give a shit about anybody, except maybe your father and your brother, and that hasn't done your brother much good. Why the sudden interest in my stepdaughter?" Mystique asked.

"I saw some shit over in 'Nam even I never saw, before. I almost died, and the soldier who saved my life was a woman. Not a frail. A woman. It made me think." He replied.

Everyone was waiting for him to say something else, but he didn't.

Rogue was sure that her stepmother was going to lodge another complaint, but she just sighed.

"I want her back here every weekend. And that's Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. And if she even hints to me that you've touched her in any way she doesn't like, I will kill you, Victor. I will find a way."

"Not for the first 13 weeks."

"13 weeks!"

"Boot camp for the Marines is 13 weeks, Raven. And Stripe here has a lot more to learn than your average grunt."

"Victor, you're a son-of-a-bitch!"

"So's the world. Bigger'n me."

"I think it should be left up to Rogue. She's 18, now." Erik interrupted.

"Well, Rogue, you're always telling me you're an adult. Time for you to make your first adult descion. Major Creed wants to make an operative out of you. That was his job in the last war, and grown men older than you died in the process. I don't doubt it will be a season in Hell. And, it goes without saying you can quit whenever you like. But, when you're through, you will certainly be able to take on the X-Men. Or join them. Or any other superhero or villain team, or intelligence organisation. If that is what you really want."

Rogue looked at Erik like he had two heads.

All her life she had been told to wait, told to sit down and be nice and act like a lady, but it was never what she wanted.

This was what she wanted, more than anything, and she couldn't figure out how Victor Creed had known that.

"I'll do it." Rogue decided.

**Brotherhood Compound, Upstate New York**

Rogue lay in the narrow, uncomfortable bed, feeling nervous and just a little frightened.

Alright, a lot frightened.

She had been permitted to pack nothing, but a small bag with underwear and personal feminine items and her journal, and Victor-

No.

Not Victor.

Major Creed.

Major Creed, sir!

- hadn't said two words to her as he drove her to this remote compound in the wilds of upstate

New York.

That made her nervous.

Then he led her to this tiny, spare little room that was like a jail cell.

It had a sink, and a toilet in one corner, and this narrow bed in the other, and there was an empty bookshelf in the third corner, a rack with several black fatigue uniforms in the fourth.

There was a table with one chair in the middle.

He said nothing to her, just walked her into the room and shut the door.

Rogue hadn't got a wink of sleep when that door flew open, and the room was filled with hostile, barking Major Creed, shining a flashlight in her face.

"Good morning, dogface! It's 3 AM and it's a beeeau-tiful day, what are you doing still in bed? Out of bed, right now, move it, move it! Put those fatigues on, soldier, what the fuck do you think is is, a goddamn vacation?"

"But Major Creed, sir…"

He got right in her face and screamed at her.

"But? Did you say "but" to me, dogface? That is the first word of an insubordinate statement, and I do not want to hear any insubordinate statements out of you! You've got two minutes to get those fatigues on, and your regulation sidearm and rifle, and be in that hallway or when you come back tonight, that bed isn't going to be there! Do I make myself clear, grunt?"

"Yes."

"YES, WHAT?"

"Yes, sir, Major Creed, sir!"

"That sounded like steam escaping! I CAN'T HEAR YOU, GRUNT!"

"YES SIR, MAJOR CREED, SIR!"

"That's better. Two minutes."

Two minutes?

Well, this was Boot Camp, Sabretooth style.

And she had asked for it.

When Rogue came out the door, Major Creed, who was in imposing black fatigues decorated with patches and insignia that made him look even more menacing, thrust a heavy black canvas backpack at her.

"Put that on, dogface! Now! Move it! Move it! Move it!"

It was "dogaface" and "grunt" and, occasionally, "frail" as he marched her through the dark, in fatigues and combat boots, uphill, into the woods with the heavy pack on her back and an M-16 carbine in her hands, wearing a Colt Navy. 45 automatic.

Meanwhile, Rogue greatly disliked slacks, she considered them work-clothes. She always wore a skirt of some kind, midi, mini, and maxi, and only in summertime did she not wear tights or stockings.

Nor were combat boots her style.

Also, she had never fired a gun in her life.

One of her little tasks was to clean, oil, break down, and reassemble what guns the Brotherhood used, but she had never been allowed to shoot.

Rogue was thinking that was, at least, progress, when she stumbled in the dark over her own combat boots, and fell.

"Oh, you like it on the ground, huh, dogface? Well, you can stay there, for awhile. Fifty push- ups.! Let's go!"

Rogue didn't ask questions, she struggled through fifty push ups, got up and kept going.

"Halt!"

They were somewhere, and at that somewhere, Major Creed had set up a firing range.

He showed her how to aim both weapons, and how to fire them, and then stepped back.

Quite a bit.

Rogue managed to hit one of the targets, once, with the .45, but when she fired the M16, the shots went wild, and she stumbled back a few steps, and the butt of the gun thwacked painfully into her body.

Rogue, however, already knew better than to double over in pain.

That would probably equal more push-ups.

"That was pathetic, grunt! But, don't worry. You're going to have plenty of time to practise."

He marched her further through the woods to a full military-style obstacle course.

Rogue didn't get past climbing the rope.

"Alright, frail, the most important thing you're going to learn this morning is about setting and reaching goals. In thirty days time, you will be able to run that obstacle course! You will be able to break down, assemble and load both of those weapons within two minutes time! And you will be accurate to the yellow range on those targets! If you fail to reach those goals, then I will be forced to conclude I have been too lenient with you, and you'll be restricted to one meal a day, and two hours of sleep in a much less opulent room than what you have now! Do you understand me, dogface!"

"YES, SIR, MAJOR CREED, SIR!"

Rogue returned to her room by seven, where there was a hard boiled egg, two pieces of toast, two pieces of bacon and black coffee waiting for her.

She wolfed the food, and it was a good thing, because by eight she was off to target practise.

At ten, she learned how to do one-handed pushups.

She would be expected to do them from now on.

Lunch, at noon, was a turkey sandwich, chicken soup, and a glass of apple juice.

After lunch, she had to run three laps around the compound, or, a total of about tem miles.

Every time she started lagging, it was fifty one handed push-ups, or as many as she could physically manage.

By the time that was over, Rogue was in an exhausted heap on the ground.

"Alright, grunt. Time for combat training. But first, you're going to need a little boost. On your feet!"

Rogue stood up.

"Take off one of those gloves! Now!"

Rogue took off one of her gloves.

Major Creed unbuttoned two of the buttons on his BDU shirt, and before she could protest, he grabbed her hand, put it directly in the middle of his broad, muscular, hairy chest, and held it there.

Rogue hadn't touched another human being with her bare hands for years, and the unaccustomed sensation was electrifying in and of itself, and that was before she began absorbing the feral mutant's powers.

His powers, but nothing of his memories, nothing of him at all.

His mind was like a steel trap.

Suddenly, Rogue wasn't sore, or tired, anymore.

In fact, she felt great.

No, let's scratch that and make it fucking unbelievable.

Strength surged through her limbs, and all of the sudden, the world was completely different.

Familiar sounds and smells assailed her, but they were so much keener, more pressing.

Her heart was beating much too fast; she could hear her own blood surging through her veins.

Major Creed let her hand go, but, an instant later, he attacked her.

Rogue felt a strange twinge in her hands, and, as if on instinct, she returned the lunge, striking out with savage bony claws, only to be met with even more savage claws at her throat.

Her claws were different than his; they came out of her hands, like Wolverine's.

Major Creed didn't seem surprised.

"That was pretty good, grunt. But, as you can see, it ain't all instinct. There's technique to it. That's the next thing you're going to learn. Starting right now. In two weeks, I'm going to attack you, again. This time, I won't be pulling any punches."

Rogue was wondering how it was she hadn't so much as inconvenienced Sabretooth with her touch; she was embarrassed at how exciting it had been to touch someone, let alone a man, let alone this man, and she had to suppress the urge to bear her brand new fangs and snarl at him.

By dinnertime, which was a ham steak and a baked potato, and a glass of milk, Rogue was so physically and mentally exhausted, she fell onto the bed.

Her whole body hurt, and suddenly becoming a feral mutant was at the least a little unsettling and at the most completely unnerving.

On the other hand, it was also empowering and exhilarating.

So was the indisputable fact that her touch was not harmful to Major Creed, in the least.

The best thing about it was the healing factor, which quieted her pain enough that she could get out of bed when Major Creed pounded on her door and told her it was time for her shower, and she had 15 minutes.

After her shower, Rogue fell into bed, and went to sleep.

The next day, Major Creed woke her up at nine, but kept her awake on night manoeuvres until midnight.

The day after that, he woke her at three.

* * *

The first two weeks of torture passed slowly.

The promised attack came shortly after two weeks, while Rogue was on her morning march.

She heard the low snarl, and whirled around, claws out, to face an actual Sabretooth attack.

She ducked the first swipe, ignored the pain from the second, and let him bite her, just so she could get her claws in a swipe at his belly, but Victor beat her to the punch.

Rogue wrapped one arm around her belly, and spitefully, clawed at Major Creed's face, tearing out an eye and leaving three, long, bloody furrows.

He swore, and threw his hands up in front of his face as Rogue collapsed on the ground in a pool of blood, trying to pack her erupting intestines back into her belly.

"Fuck! Leave it to a woman to take the cheap shot!"

Rogue wanted to reply, but she lapsed into unconsciousness from loss of blood.

When she came to she was back at the compound, in her room, lying in bed in her underwear.

Major Creed must have taken off her destroyed fatigues, cleaned her up, and put her to bed.

Rogue put on a tee shirt she had stolen from him that came down low enough on her to serve as nightgown and bathrobe to wait for shower time.

That night, it didn't come.

* * *

"…I'll get you for this, Victor Creed! If it's the last thing, the very last thing ah ever do! I'll put out your eyes until they don't grow back, I'll slice off your fingers and cut your fangs right out of your gums! I'll get you, I'll get you!"

Rogue screamed until she was hoarse, but it did her no good.

Two seconds.

She had been all of two seconds over time in weapons detail.

Never mind that she had hit the target, right at the bulls-eye.

No, she had been two seconds over with breaking down and assembly of her weapons.

And for those two seconds, she had been shut up, naked in a tiny, windowless cell the size of a closet, with no furniture but a toilet.

Twice a day there was water.

Once a day there was bread.

Fall in upstate New York is a lot like winter in other places, and after five days and nights of starving, freezing and shivering, Rogue stopped threatening Major Creed with violence.

Aunt Carrie always said, you'll get more flies with honey than you do with vinegar.

When the slot in the door opened and Victor shoved her water through, she grabbed his hand in both of hers.

"Victor, ah know you're only doing this to me to make me stronger. Ah know you're not bein' cruel to me because you enjoy it. And ah don't hate you for it. Ah couldn't hate you, Victor. You do know how ah feel about you, don't you, sugah? I'm not just sayin' it to get outa this terrible place. Ah may be a lady, but I'm still a woman, you know. Ah would say that you can take me, I'm yours, you can do what you want with me, but trust me, sugah, ah want it, too. There are no words to say how much. Please, Victor. Ah think ah might die in here. Feel how cold mah hands are."

Rogue could hear his breath as it quickened and deepened, and she could smell his arousal.

For a minute, she was frightened.

She hadn't meant to provoke him into, into taking her, there, on the cold floor, but she trusted him not to hurt her, and told herself, honey, you asked for it, and you ought to be happy to take what you can get.

"Victor?"

"I'm coming in." He snarled.

Rogue was unused to the light, and she scuttled back against the wall, holding her arm in front of her eyes.

She was suddenly very scared, and she felt frightened and helpless.

_Snikt!_

Her claws had extended on their own, and blindly, she held them in front of her.

"Major Creed, sir, I cain't see you. I cain't see a thing." she said.

"Put those claws away, soldier. You're gonna hit the showers, then you'll be back in your room. Staring tomorrow, manouvers as usual."

There was food waiting in her room, real food, and the fatigues and the little cell of a room had never looked so good to her.

Rogue was up half the night, waiting, but no one came.

So, she just got dressed and waited for the morning march.

* * *

Rogue made it through the obstacle course with minutes to spare, because she was afraid not to.

It wasn't that things weren't so bad, it was just that she got used to it.

The next two months, with their attendant goals, whizzed by in a maelstrom of night raids, bad mornings, one-handed pushups, gunfire, pain, suffering and misery.

The 13 week mark came and went.

Rogue was not permitted to go home.

She didn't protest.

She didn't dare.

Rogue leaped out of bed in the morning, and she marched without complaint, she ran however many times she had to around the compound; she did what she was told when she was told to do it, unquestioningly.

She wanted to know why his claws were an extension of his fingertips, and hers came out of the spaces between her knuckles, but she never asked.

She was afraid to.

If Major Creed told her to rip her own guts out, she would have done it.

If he told her to do ten thousand one-handed push ups she would have done push ups until she expired and when she came to again, continued.

Hell, if he unzipped his pants and told her to get on her knees, she would have done that, too, but that was not part of the litany of horrors; and Rogue had to wonder if she was thinking in such crude and impersonal terms that boot camp hadn't done something unpleasant to her mind.

Then again, she knew it had.

If it had been Major Creed's goal to break her; he had achieved that goal.

For fear of solitary, and of worse punishments that haunted Rogue's nightmares, she was Sabretooth's frightened, cringing, willing slave.

Another torturous week rolled by, maybe two.

Rogue had lost all perspective on time.

She slept like the dead, and ate little of her food; food made her sick.

She quit answering the call to shower; smelling how bad she smelled sometimes that kept her awake enough to do what she had to do.

Despite her healing factor, Rogue became worn down, and listless.

Somewhere in the mix she contracted a virus, not just an ordinary cold, but some kind of insidious Martian Death Flu that left her unable to eat for the roiling of her stomach, burning with fever and aching all over.

Her throat alone hurt so badly she could hardly drink water.

It took all the effort she had left in her body to make it from the bed to the toilet and back.

Major Creed gave her two days to get better, but Rogue was so emotionally devastated that her healing factor could not keep up with the illness.

When he came, with his orders and his flashlight, she couldn't even get out of bed; she was so weak.

Time seemed to stop.

She wasn't in the cell anymore, she was in a larger bed in a warmer room, in a safe place where there were no morning raids or night raids and no fear.

She knew she was delirious; because she remembered being seen by a doctor in a white coat with a kind voice and wire-rimmed glasses, but the doctor was covered in blue fur, even on his hands.

Days went by.

She wasn't sure if she was alone or not; someone was taking care of her.

And then, she was back in her cell.

On one morning, he returned.

Major Creed.

Of course, he had no mercy; she had not expected him to have mercy, and Rogue hardly felt the cold floor on her raw bones when he knocked her out of bed.

It seemed a good enough place to die, here on the floor.

Major Creed was shouting something at her, but Rogue was far away, a very long way far away, where she could no longer hear him.

Then, something happened.

Rogue felt a sharp, stabbing pain in her ribs.

It wasn't any worse than the rest of the pain she was in; it was the insult more than the injury.

He had kicked her in the ribs.

It wasn't bad enough he brought her to this place, wrecked her health and broke her spirit, it wasn't bad enough that she was literally dying at his jackbooted feet, no, the dirty motherfucker had to kick her in the ribs.

And laugh.

He was actually fucking laughing at her.

Deep in Rogue's guts that Victor had perforated with his claws many times, a tiny knot of anger sparked.

Very soon, it spread through her belly like a fire.

And, as the rage rushed into Rogue's arms, and her legs, and finally hit her head like a 20 pound sledgehammer, it brought with it complete relief from her pain, and from her sickness, and all of her fear.

Rogue let the anger build and burn and rage through her body until she was so tightly coiled in a ball on the floor that she thought she might explode.

Then, she did.

With a mighty roar, Rogue leapt to her feet, claws out, and buried them in the middle of her torturer's chest, at the same time as she closed her deadly fangs around his carotid artery and tore, worrying his neck like a rag doll, feeling her claws sink into his heart.

Rogue jumped away, blood and gore on her claws as she spat out a mouthful of flesh and blood.

Lying at her feet, his great heart stopped by her claws and his throat torn out, she watched the light go out of Victor Creed's eyes.

She actually put her foot on his neck and beat her chest and roared in triumph.

Then, she realised he was dead.

Unfortunately, the agony of defeat was coming hard on the heels of victory.

His eyes were wide open, and unseeing, and Sabretooth was dead as he was ever going to be.

Rogue panicked.

"Oh mah God, I've killed him!"

She put her blanket over him, and her pillow under his head, and ran through the compound until she found Victor's rooms.

She was surprised at how neat and orderly they were, and right on the desk was the phone number of a Dr. Mc Coy.

Rogue dialled it.

It was the same doctor, she recognised his voice when he answered the phone.

"Doctor McCoy, you just came here, and treated me, and there's been a terrible accident, and I think he's really dead. Major Creed. I think I've killed him. Can you come right away?"

"Calm down, calm down, Miss Rogue. I know all about Victor Creed, and his physiology. Unless you cut off his head, and threw it far enough away that his body would die before it could find it, he's not really dead. Was this part of your training?"

"Ah think so."

"Then you're in no danger. And neither is he. You go back to where you think he's lying dead, and by now, I'm sure he's alive and well."

"Thank you, Dr. McCoy. May ah ask you an impertinent question?"

"Go ahead."

"Are you blue and furry, or was I really sick?"

He laughed.

"I am blue, and furry, and I do look a little bit like a giant pussycat. But you were sick. I want you to take it easy for another week. Training or no."

"I will, Doctor. Thank you. Good bye."

"Good bye, Miss Rogue."

Rogue returned to her cell, only to find Victor leaving it and locking the door, with the bag she had brought with her slung over his shoulder.

"What the hell was that?" Rogue insisted.

"That was you passing with flyin' colors. Congratulations, Stripe. You're outa boot camp. Let's get the fuck outa here and go home."

"What? How? By killing you?"

"Yep. That's how my grunts showed me they had what it took. And you killed me real good."

"Wait. No more push ups, no more night raids, no more of any of that? No more grunt and dogface, no more marching uphill in the rain, no more fording rivers with my gun over my head, no more fatigues and combat boots?"

"Nope. Your usual clothes suit you a lot better, Stripe. You're not a fatigues an' combat boots kinda woman. I got some of your clothes, here. Hit the showers, go change and go out to the car. Leave the Jeep. I'll be there as soon as I get myself cleaned up an' dressed. And you don't need a gun, do you? Like I said, boot camp's over. You and I are goin' home."

* * *

Rogue was glad to see the Brotherhood compound fading into the distance.

"When you say home, do you mean, to Central Park West?" Rogue asked Victor.

"On the weekends. During the week, you and me are gonna be living at my place over on the Lower East Side. It's in a rough neighbourhood, but I got a real big place, I got it set out nice, an' nobody ever fucks with me. Nobody. Ever. And no more sir, yes, sir and no more Mr. Creed, either."

Rogue was quiet, for awhile.

"What's the next phase of my training?"

"Well, first you're going to use your new skills to make sure nobody in the street fucks with you, either. Nobody. Ever. Then, after that, I'll be taking you with me on missions. You do what I tell you and don't grow a big brain. So, Stripe, ya wanna go have a beer?"

"I most certainly do not, Victor! I do not drink beer, although I do enjoy an occasional cocktail or a glass of wine. And, furthermore, if it's part of my training I'll have to go into those awful dives with you, but, otherwise, I only go to reputable establishments. You may have tried to make me forget it, but I am a lady."

"I know that, Stripe. That's one of the reasons I picked you."

"I would, however, after I've had a chance to go home, and take a real bath, get a few hours of sleep in my own bed, change my clothes and spend some time with Erik and Raven, be willing to go to dinner with you."

"Oh yeah? Do I need to have one of my suits pressed?"

"It doesn't have to be a fancy place, Victor. Just the kind of place where neither of us has to throw somebody out a window."

"Okay, Stripe. Sure thing." Sabretooth chuckled.

"Victor, did you put me through what you just put me through because you had to, or because you didn't care, either way?"

"Stripe, if you strip the bullshit, an' the costumes an' the hero an' villain jazz offa the whole deal, what it comes down to is, we all work in black ops. Some people, mutant or otherwise, hell, most people, don't have what it takes. I only had one way to find out if you did."

"But what about when ah got sick?"

"You really don't know, do you?"

"No."

"I was takin' care of you. I had to. You were pretty fuckin' sick, kid. I hadda have a doctor come in to look at you. You were in bed for about a week, outa your head with fever. It was pretty bad. But you got better. An' I figured that was my chance to see if you were really ready. And you showed me you were."

"Don't tell my mother. She won't let me continue my training."

"Okay, Stripe. I won't."

It started to snow, a little, and as Rogue counted the months in her mind, she realised it must be close to December.

She looked over at Sabretooth.

"Why me, Victor?"

"Because you remind me of somebody who never got a chance, kid. She deserved one, too. I couldn't do anything for her but stand by and watch her make bad choices that eventually killed her. Not this time."

Rogue was surprised.

Her stepmother had told her that Victor Creed was a brutal, heartless, ruthless man, except for when he wasn't, and having him give a damn about you was a lot worse for you than him being brutal, heartless and ruthless.

"Was it a girl you loved?" she asked.

"Yeah. My mother. Victoria MacPherson Logan Creed. But when buried her, I put Pa's name on her tombstone, not that bastard Zebediah Creed's."

Rogue was shocked.

She had never thought of Victor as being a child, as having a mother, or a father, but that was silly, of course he had.

A long time ago.

"I do? Did…did she love you, too."

"More than anything. She usedta tell me that I was the most important person in to her in the whole world. She left my Pa, and they had been together for almost thirty years, because she wanted to find me a father who could give me a better life."

"Did she pass on recently?"

"No, I was just a kid about 13 when she died. My stepfather killed her. He had me tied down in the basement, and he had torn out most of my claws with pliers, and Ma attacked him. He cut her head off with an axe, and finished the job on me."

"Oh mah Gawd, Victor!"

"He wasn't there, Stripe. I had to see to it justice was done. I hid out until my fangs and my claws grew back, and I killed that son of a bitch like no man before him ever died. Then I looked for her body. He had Ma a barrel like she was so much trash, and I got some of his money to buy her a plot and a headstone. Then I took off on old Zebediah's best horse and went back to my Pa, for awahile. Up in the Rockies."

"Is he still living? Your real father?"

"My Pa? Old Black Tom? He was born in 1760, and he's not even all grey, yet. You know what's gonna kill Pop? The next asteroid. Crazy drunken Irish son of a bitch." Victor replied, fondly.

Rogue snorted, bitterly

"At least you know your mother loved you. And your father. I never met my parents. And no one I was related to ever gave a damn if I lived or died. When Raven found me, I was living in a shack with a shotgun and a sleeping bag, like a God damn animal. It must be nice, Victor. Knowing that, at the very least, the people who gave you life weren't ashamed that you existed. I can't explain how much it hurts, knowing that your family, your own family, reviles you."

"I know, Stripe. I got one living relative besides Pa. My little brother. We got different mothers, but that never meant shit to me. When I first got to Pa's homestead, my little brother, he was two or three years old. He looked just like a tiny little Pa. I only stayed with Pa a year or two before I went down off the mountain. That was a long time ago, when there was nothin' Old about the West, an' I wanted to get in on it while the getting was good. But Jimmy was already pretty attached to me. He cried when I left, tried to hang onto my leg. Ten years later, our Pa had some trouble with Jimmy's mother, they tried to hang her killin' on him, when he wasn't responsible, and Pa had to go on the run. Jimmy was only 12, and Pa got word to me he was all alone, up on the mountain, so I gave up a damn good job and an easy life in a boomtown to go back up on the mountain. I spent ten years raising my little brother, and some of that time was hard times, goddamn hard times, harder than I was used to; I was no mountain man. But I didn't complain, and I didn't really mind, I mean, it was my brother right? Well, Pa came back, an' he had a mining claim in the Yukon. This was during the Gold Rush. 1905, 1906, something like that. Thing were just starting to get better for our family, and then, they wet bad. Real bad."

Victor quit talking for a few moments, but Rogue didn't say a word; she had the feeling he wasn't done yet.

"Anyway, me an' Jimmy got in a mess over some fuckin' woman, an' he turned his back on me. Me. His own fuckin' brother. To this day, he fuckin' hates me over it, over her and some other minor shit. She was nothing but a goddamn whore, anyway, and Jimmy'd rather hate me for killing her than admit that's what she was. Meanwhile, since I was twenty-three years old, an, I'm 97, this year, every time I turn around I hafta pull his runty little ass outa the fire. An' ya know what? The little fucker still hates me. He blames every lousy thing that ever happened to him on me. But he's still my brother, the little fuck. I won't give up on him, till the day he kills me, or I kill him. So, yeah, Stripe, I know just how you feel."

Rogue was thinking that she and Victor had more in common than met the eye.

Then, and idea came into her mind.

An unpleasant one.

"Victor, if I absorbed your powers, them why are my claws different from yours?"

"I'm not sure. But I got an idea. The thing about ferals is, we're all different. Each of us are feral in a different way. Me, both my parents were ferals, and my Ma, she had claws an' fangs like I do. But my Pa, he has claws like the ones you got, an' shorter fangs. But nobody in my family has retractable fangs, like yours. That's just you, Stripe. That's how you're a feral."

"Am I going to be like this, forever?"

"You tell me."

"Well, I've absorbed other people's powers. But they usually wear off me, in a few weeks. But I only absorbed your powers, a few times, and I haven't changed. So, I guess it's permanent. Ah don't know. Maybe the unconscious part of mah mind has some control over this, and it's decided that feral is the way to be."

They both fell silent and Rogue was still thinking about who his brother was.

Then, she thought about her claws, and with stupid belatedness, it hit her.

They looked nothing alike, but he said they had different mothers.

And she could only think of one feral mutant who mixed it up with Victor Creed on a regular basis, who had claws like hers.

Claws like their father's.

His sworn enemy.

"Oh mah Gawd, Victor! Wolverine's your brother?"

"His name is James John Logan Howlett. But yeah, he's my brother. Jimmy, we always called him."

"Why does he go by Logan?"

"Because it's the only part of his name he can remember. He's all fucked up. When they put the metal on him, it fucked his mind. Or they fucked his mind. He remembers enough that he still hates me, though."

Rogue could scarecely believe it.

The whole family story was such a tragedy.

"I'm so sorry, Victor. Ah…ah just don't know what else to say. Words fail me, in thae face of such a terrible family tragedy."

"Yeah, I'm sorry, too, Stripe. And you're right. It was a goddamn tragedy right from the start. Yeah, I'm sorry, alright. Sorry that Jimmy's such a fuckin' malcontent an' a pain in the ass. Pa says his mother was high strung. Which is a nice way of saying she was a pain in the ass, too. But I met her. She was a decent woman, a little picky, but she was an aristocrat. But nothin' like Jimmy! Not the pain in the ass he is! My fuckin' brother. The goddamn Wolverine. The world's smallest giant. Jesus wept."

Rogue couldn't help it, that world's smallest giant comment made her laugh.

Victor laughed, too.

"I'm sorry, Victor, ah shouldn't be laughing."

"It's alright, Stripe. I'm laughin' too. Whaddya know, we're back in the city, already. You too good for Grossmann's?"

"Of course not. Victor, can we park here?"

"Sure we can. The Sarge is parked here. If he can park here, so can I."

"The Sarge?"

"My once and future boss. Eddie Blake."

It was the dinner hour, and Grossmann's was packed.

Only Sabretooth would have the balls to frequent a restaurant frequented by superheroes.

Of course, only the Comedian would have the balls to be friendly and say hello.

"Hey, look, kid, it's Vic." He observed to Liv Napier.

"I see that, Eddie."

"Where the fuck did you go? C'mon, siddown. Both of youse. Steve, don't gimme that look. You want him back on our side, dontcha?"

Rogue noticed that Liv was looking a whole lot better; not having seen her for six months, the change for the better was obvious.

Whatever they were doing for her, it was working.

"I had Stripe in boot camp. She passed?"

"Oh yeah? You startin' her on the other side of the cape?"

"Well, yeah, Sarge."

"Good. Then when you come back in an' bring her with youse, we'll have another operative who knows the enemy from the inside."

"You're that sure I'm comin' in from the cold, Sarge?"

"Hey, you might be a lot of things, Vic, but you ain't stupid. When you cool off enough to realise that you can't beat Uncle Sam, you'll be back. Speakin' of which. I been lookin' for you. There's a problem."

"What about Jimmy?"

"We need backup. Hey, ah, kid, why don't you and Rogue go sit at the next table for a little while?"

"What, I'm not in on this?"

"You might be. But your friend isn't."

"Oh. Right."

Victor gave Rogue some money to buy her dinner, and she and Liv sat two tables over.

"So, how was it?" Liv asked.

"Horrible. You couldn't imagine." Rogue told her.

"Sure I could. I went to Vic's boot camp from hell. It wasn't so bad." Liv shrugged.

"Not for you, maybe."

"Well, you're always sayin' how you're a lady. Like the princess and the pea. So, any developments?"

"I can touch Victor without harming him. And I think I've permanently absorbed being a feral mutant."

"Man, I wish I could do that."

"Liv, you're already feral."

Liv laughed.

"Can you hear them, Rogue?"

"Of course. But ah don't speak Russian. They got us."

"Fuck they do! I speak Russian. Tell me what they're sayin', and I'll tell you what it means."


	3. The Mark of the Beast

**Chapter Three: The Mark of the Beast**

**Westchester, New York. X-Institute, 1974**

**I: Logan**

"Hey? Jimmy?"

"How come you always look both ways before you talk to me?"

"Because I figure you don't wanna be seen talkin' to the likes of me around all your fancy friends, runt."

"You got somethin' important to say, Creed, or just the usual bullshit?"

"Yeah. I do. Listen, I appreciate you lookin' after Rogue for me."

"Well, I wasn't lookin' after her just on your account, Vic. I did it because she needed lookin' after."

"What? Are you sayin' I should be ashamed of myself? What, I'm not a man? I don't get to have a woman? You always do."

"Yours always end up dying."

"So do yours!"

"Because you kill them!"

"Not all of them! And not Stripe. She's like me, now. And like you. Nothing can kill her. Not even us."

"I'll bet you planned that, huh, Vic?"

"You bet your ass I did. That's the secret Jimmy. Like what the Sarge said about Napalm. You pick on a woman who can take care of herself, ya won't be buryin' her anytime soon."

Logan looked at his brother in disbelief as he walked away.

So, you just went ahead and made Rogue that way, Vic?

Then Logan thought again.

Rogue was a lady, but she was every bit as tough as Napalm was, under the skin.

He was pretty sure nobody had made her do anything, and when Victor offered her the opportunity to become a world class badass, she'd jumped at it.

Still, his brother, what a piece of fucking work the man was.

Charlie had explained to him, when he'd first come to the X-Men, what was it, seven, eight, nine years ago, that he could help him get his memories back.

Like that was something that was going to be positive.

Logan had the feeling that he remembered the things he wanted to remember, and when people like his father, and Eddie filled him in, they told him the good things, and left out the bad shit.

Shit that Logan thought he really didn't want to know.

Well, whatever Charlie was up to hadn't really started to do the trick until the end of his tour in 'Nam, which overlapped the beginning of Sabretooth's tour.

Logan had a whole pile of memories of Victor Creed, most of which were conflicting.

His recent history with his archenemy was complicated.

Wolverine's most fractured memories were those of the mid-fifties until the time he joined the X-Men, the period right after he had been tortured and mutilated by the Weapon X program.

His first memory of the aftermath was a room in a S.H.I.E.L.D safehouse, and Eddie Blake telling him it was alright, he was back in the USA, he was safe and out of danger.

He had been pretty close to feral, then, but Eddie wasn't afraid of being hurt by him.

Neither was Victor Creed.

The very next person to show up.

The next thing Logan remembered was being folded back into the S.H.I.E.L.D. covert program, and being placed with Sabretooth.

He had a feeling of trust in the other feral mutant.

After all, the man was his brother.

That's the kind of thing you don't forget.

But Logan always had the sneaking suspicion that he was forgetting some things hat were important.

It was years before he asked why, because Logan didn't want to know the answer.

Any of the answers.

"Vic, is there some reason I feel like I wanna murder you?"

"To tell ya the truth, Jimmy, there's about forty years of bad blood between us."

"Over what?"

"A frail. I don't wanna talk about it. I don't want you to fuckin' remember. When you remember, we won't be able to be brothers, anymore. I hadda live with that for forty years. I don't wanna lose my brother over a dead frail all over again. Leave it."

Logan didn't have much in the world but his brother and Eddie, so he tried to take Vic's advice, and leave it.

Because he started to remember why there was bad blood between him and his brother, and it wasn't too long before he got horrified by Vic's brutality, and his savagery.

Somewhere in the mid sixties, Logan went with the X-Men, Victor went with the Brotherhood, and the war between them started again.

Logan managed to divest himself of much of the feeling he had for Creed, as a comrade or a brother.

Then, they ended up in Vietnam, together, and this was after Charlie started to shake the tree and memories began to rain down on Wolverine's head.

The team had been ambushed, and they were making a retreat through heavy fire when Victor and another soldier got separated.

Col. Blake and Col. Howlett decided that Col. Blake would get PFC MacLeod and Sergeant Marcano back to camp, while Col. Howlett went to recover Major Creed and the First Sergeant.

The first trace of Victor that he found was a mine crater, some bits of uniform and flesh, and a huge pool of blood.

Following their tracks and their scent, and eventually Victor shouting his name, Logan found the First Sergeant retreating rapidly and carrying Victor like a backpack.

Victor's knapsack was on his back, and sticking out of his pack were his legs.

The gruesome sight made Logan dizzy and sick, and he had to stop for a minute to puke his guts out.

He had seen many more gruesome sights in his life, and sights as gruesome as this one while he was looking for his brother and the 1st Sergeant.

But.

But a man who can look at his own brother, blown into three pieces, bled almost white with his severed legs sticking out of his backpack and everything below the middle of his thigh bloody and stringy and gone without losing his lunch, well that's a colder, harder man than even Wolverine.

Logan led them to safety, in a dry, cool grotto in a wall of rock by a river whose name he couldn't recall, at the time.

The First Sergeant patiently fit Victor's bones together and sewed his legs back on, and then left them together, to return to base camp, for help.

Victor was waiting to be alone with his brother.

He had something to say.

He was more than half dead from pain, shock and loss of blood, and close to delirious.

"Jimmy. Listen to me, Jimmy. I'm your goddamn brother. Your Pa is my Pa, and your blood is my blood. I left a big job in a boomtown to spend ten years on that shithole homestead of Pa's, scraping and scrounging to get by so I could raise you after he went on the lam. If I had to, I went hungry so that you could eat. When you were sick, I walked up a fucking mountain and I would have paid that Blackfoot shaman in my blood to get you medicine. I took care of you, Jimmy. Even after you cursed me and left me an' Pa flat over some frail, even after you spent more than thirty years hatin' me and fightin' me and nearly killin' me a few times, when those Weapon X bastards tortured you and mutilated you and tried to break your mind, I came to save you again. Because you're my brother, Jimmy. You're my blood. Hate and love and old grudges don't mean shit. So I want you to do something for me."

Just then, thinking that his brother might be dying, Logan thought about Old Black Tom.

"Name it, Vic." He said.

"If my legs don't heal, I want you to kill me. I can't be half a man for the next two hundred fuckin' years. Can you do that for me, little brother? Considering you been wantin' me dead for about sixty years?"

Tears jumped into his eyes.

"Not like this, Vic. But I'll do it."

"Swear, Jimmy."

"I swear."

Victor recovered, Jimmy's tour ended, and he went home to Westchester.

Where he met Mel, and ended up taking too big of a dose of her powers and went raving in the snow on instinct back to the old homestead, well, that knocked a big chunk of his memories loose.

Something about seeing his father, again, and living on the old place; it made the memories flood back to him.

Some of them were good memories, and some were bad, but one thing was for sure.

Sabretooth was his worst enemy, but Victor Creed was his brother.

His memory of Silver Fox, his first love, that had never left him, and one of the first things he ever recalled, even before he came to the X-Men, was his memory of her death at Sabretooth's hands.

Recalling that Sabretooth was his brother was just as painful as thinking about Silver Fox's death.

What Logan couldn't figure out was why his brother, his own brother, would do such a horrible thing to him.

And then continue doing horrible things to him for the next sixty years or so.

But, also saving his ass on several different occasions.

He had been thinking on it since 1970, and Logan had come to an understanding of his older brother, one that he would rather not have had.

Vic wasn't insane, but he was a complete psychopath.

Not a good trait for a feral mutant to possess.

He hadn't been born that way, but his mother had married some Bible-thumping lunatic who beat the shit out of both of them, and killed her in front of Vic after he pulled his teeth and claws out with pliers to get the Devil out of him.

Cut her head off.

That's enough to make anybody crazy, let alone a feral mutant.

Which may have explained why Vic was in a big goddamn hurry to rush to his half-brother's side after a whole lot of horrible things that Logan didn't remember and Pa wouldn't tell him about happened at the Howlett place.

Things were alright between him and his brother, good, even, as long as it was him and his brother and Pa.

And if there was a woman in the mix, somewhere, well if she came and went, that was alright.

But, if Logan started to get attached, that seemed to bother Victor.

And when he got old enough to decide that maybe his big brother's philosophy of hate and ultraviolence, us against the world, wasn't for him, that really bothered Victor.

Now that they were living together, again, however unwillingly, it all became pretty clear.

He hated his brother, but his brother did not hate him.

Not even a little bit.

Victor just couldn't understand why his little brother let a few dead frails and a couple of fights get in the way of things being the way they used to be, them against the world.

He also didn't understand that it hurt Logan to hate him, and that he wanted to be able to forgive Vic, and bury the hatchet, and be like brothers, again, but Vic was Vic and he would never change, and so Logan could never forgive him.

And then there was the problem with women.

Victor didn't show any desire at all to kill Liv Napier.

She had the Victor Creed Seal of Approval.

She was tough, brash and ultraviolent, she had personally killed Vic twice, and most importantly, she was in his Logan's life only one day a week as a woman.

He was more hostile towards Mel, until she picked his truck up over her head and threatened to hit him with it.

Now, Mel was Logan's steady girl, the way Silver Fox had been, but there was nothing frail about Mel. She may not have been as ultraviolent as Liv, who, among other things, was a mask and a black ops commando with S.H.I.E.L.D., but Yukon Mel was no cream puff.

She was a Hell's Angel who had lived by her wits from the time she was 13 until she was 20, travelling from Vancouver to Tijuana and back again, a graduate of the School of Hard Hippie who could heft pickup trucks over her head.

Vic tolerated her; she was from their home town, and her father was a friend of their father's, because of those things, Mel was alright.

Jean was another story.

Logan could tell that Sabretooth really wanted to kill her.

That was enough to make him hate his brother.

Why?

Because to Victor's twisted mind, Jean, like Silver Fox, was just the kind of woman who could pull Logan away from his brother, and his brother's violent world, and then he, Victor, would lose his brother, forever.

He didn't realise he already had.

And Logan wasn't going to tell him.

He knew he was going to have to kill Victor, someday, but he was never going to tell him that.

But, at least for six months, they had to be civil to each other, and Logan found the truce a little easier to affect than he thought it would be.

Easy to affect, but hard to take, because it made him think of what could have been.

It made him remember when he was a boy 12 years old and his big brother who was only about ten years older than him used to live together on Pa's homestead, high in the Canadian Rockies, and of those days when he was in his early twenties after Pa came back, when he took his boys to the Yukon to his mining claim, and Logan had his first beer, and he was with Silver Fox, his first love, and he was just a dumb country boy from the backwoods, glad that he had her and his Pa and his brother, Vic, and everything was right with the world.

It broke his heart just to think about it.

And then, just when he thought that things couldn't get worse, they did.

He knew from the start that Rogue was his brother's protégé, right before she had joined the X-Men, Victor met with him at the Thruway Tavern, neutral ground, and asked him to look after Rogue.

He had originally suspected that Rogue was closer to Victor than she'd let on, but he had assumed that it was a result of his brother's usual brutal charm towards women.

She hardly mentioned his name to anyone else, and even then, it was "Sabretooth", but Rogue was closer to Logan than she was to anyone at the X-Institute.

He had taken over where Victor left off, and she had no secrets from her mentor.

To Logan, she talked about him all the time.

It was Vic this, and Vic that, and Victor and I did this, and Victor used to tell me that, and it wasn't long before Logan noticed the way she'd say his brother's name, and the look on her face when she said it, and realised that there was something more between his brother and Rogue than him showing her the ropes in more ways than one because she was young and amusing and around.

Eventually, she trusted him enough to show it to him.

The mark on her right shoulder.

Two fang marks with the three claw marks in between them.

Logan knew those marks.

Victor had put those marks on his brother's women that he'd killed, and he had put those marks only once in a hundred years on a living woman, to show that she was his.

Till death did they part.

And death, at Victor's hands, was how they parted.

It hadn't been murder, it had been mercy, but had she never known Victor Creed, Matsuko would probably still be alive.

Not to mention that even with his spotty memories, Logan could recall how her death had broken Victor, shattered him like a glass goblet, and that when he put himself back together, he was less Victor Creed and more Sabretooth than he had been, before.

And now Victor was at the Institute, and it wasn't two weeks before Rogue was walking around wearing a quiet smile where there had been a quiet frown, and he could smell his brother all over her.

Every once in awhile, she would put her hand on her shoulder, and smile.

Logan knew he had to do something, but he didn't know what it was.

**II: Charles**

Charles Xavier sat in his office, at his desk, looking at several sheets of white notepaper, and the phrases he had written on them.

The first was an observation that, in the past, Rogue had never worn any garment that left her right shoulder fully exposed.

Even in the summertime, if she wore a halter or tank top, and on the occasions that she did, or went swimming, she always wore one and additional scarf wrapped and tied around her shoulder.

Charles had always assumed that she had a particularly ugly scar there, and that was why he was surprised to see her in a halter top on a warm spring day, with a gauzy scarf draped, as usual, around her shoulders, but nothing tied around that right shoulder.

Through the scarf, you could plainly see there was a scar there, but it was only three small scratches with the mark of a puncture wound on either side.

It was a curious mark, and it looked too stylised to have been made accidentally.

Someone had put that mark on Rogue, and she had been either ashamed to bear it, or unwilling to look at it for as long as she had been with the X-Men, and now, all the sudden, it didn't bother her.

Charles looked at the second piece of paper, frowning.

He had notated upon it that in spite of the fact that Rogue's outward demeanor, one of grateful and reserved stoicism, and contentment, if not true happiness had not changed, the recent internal change in her was so palpable that he could not help but notice it.

Passing Rogue's chair during lunch one afternoon, even though, as it was his custom, Professor X had his internal psi-shields up, the sense of leaping, kinetic, consuming joy that was bursting from Rogue in waves was absolutely incredible.

Her happiness was such that it made him smile, and he was about to ask her on what grounds she should be congratulated when he looked at her and realised that she was keeping up her former demeanour even though it no longer reflected her feelings.

Why would Rogue want too keep such profound joy a secret from him, and from her fellow X-Men?

He looked at the next sheet of paper, and his frown deepened, considerably.

He had seen Victor Creed touch Rogue, put his hand on her skin, and suffer no ill effect.

Of course, this wasn't alarming in and of itself.

Victor, after all, was Logan's brother, and Logan could touch Rogue without suffering any pronounced ill effects.

Also, Rogue had never made a secret of the fact that she was a confused and frightened child when Raven and Erik adopted her, and grew up to be a young woman eager to take her place in her step-parents world.

That was an ambition that was frustrated until she came under the tutelage the man who made her a woman capable of becoming a worthy adversary of the likes of the X-Men and the Avengers.

In a space of two years time.

Victor Creed.

He had been her drill sergeant, her teacher, her mentor.

The set of skills that Sabretooth had taught her, as refined and tempered by Logan, were still the same skills she used as a member of the X-Men.

That Victor would have a certain familiarity with her was to be expected.

It was also to be expected that Rogue would feel ambivalent towards Sabretooth, and that his presence would cause her some emotional turmoil.

That was certainly what Charles had seen.

Rogue was sitting at the table in the kitchen, with a large glass of iced tea, writing in a notebook and watching the television on the counter while she waited for water to boil.

Charles had been loading the dishwasher, at the time, and Scott was also in the kitchen, looking for something in the pantry.

Sometimes, in a mansion full of mutants, it was best to hide in plain sight.

Victor came in, carelessly opened the refrigerator and caused Rogue's glass of iced tea to spill, soaking her beige tee shirt and white voile and lace skirt, and the floor.

"Goddamnit, Victor, you big, clumsy oaf!" she had yelled.

"Settle down, Stripe. That's why they make washing machines."

He had grabbed a tea towel, and started wiping off the front of her clothes, and she slapped his hands away.

"Stop that! Don't touch me!"

"It's not a pass, kid. I was just tryna fuckin' help!"

Charles noticed that Victor grabbed her by the arms and his grasp encompassed the brief area of skin where the gloves stopped and her tee shirt began.

He touched her skin, and showed absolutely no ill effects, and great familiarity.

She shook him off.

"Keep your hands off me! I'm cold and I'm wet and there's ice cold tea running down into mah panties, the last thing ah need is you manhandling me. You've helped enough, thank you!"

"Well, you know me, Stripe. I always manage to get women's panties wet, one way or the other."

Rogue gave him a very dirty look, slammed the notebook shut and left the room.

Victor Creed picked up the glass, tossed it in the sink, and dropped the towel over the pool of spilt tea.

"Women, huh, Chuck? I smell PMS, that's what it is. Shit." He'd said.

He got his beer from the fridge, and left.

Scott muttered something about Victor being a goddamned crude slob, cleaned up the mess, handed Xavier the glass from the sink, and went back to the pantry.

But, as the famous and secretly mutant composer Peter Townshend had observed, it all looks fine to the naked eye, but it doesn't really happen that way at all.

As soon as Victor entered the room with Rogue, Charles had let his shields down.

Into the symphony of Rogue's now quieter happiness another strain crept, a powerful, suffusing feeling that was very primal, very touching, a feeling of being protected and safe, a feeling that someone like Rogue had probably experienced very little in her life, until she met her step-parents.

Victor, like Logan, was fairly inscrutable, but his feelings, for once, were very plain.

He looked from Rogue to Charles and to Scott, and especially when he looked at the younger, able-bodied Cyclops, Professor X could feel the hostility in this angry man spike.

When Rogue cried out in her anger, and Victor tried to clean her off with the towel, Charles was surprised to detect a feeling in him that identical to one his brother often had.

A fierce protectiveness.

But this was not a general feeling of fierce protectiveness, it was very specific to Rogue, and combined with an equally fierce possessiveness.

Finally, in the last exchange between them, especially as Victor insisted he wasn't making a pass and Rogue was shouting in outrage about cold tea running into her underwear, a very strong and definite sexual tension crackled electrifyingly between them.

Charles rearranged his papers, again, and sat back a little, shaking his head as he put together what they told him.

Victor Creed was not just Rogue's teacher and mentor, he had been her lover, quite possibly, because of her lack of control over her powers, the only lover she'd ever had.

This was not surprising in and of itself.

What was surprising was that it was plain that Rogue had aroused that in Victor Creed which was still human, decent and sane, and that he considered her to be his.

As such, he marked her, with his claws and his teeth, to show the world that this woman belonged to him.

No wonder Rogue was so conflicted.

Victor Creed had been her friend, her mentor, and her lover, and watched over her with a fierce protectiveness and possessiveness that made her feel warm, and safe, and loved.

Then, when she became old enough and wise enough to choose the right path from the wrong path, and left the Brotherhood for the X-Men, she was torn, not only from her step-parents, but from this man who was father, teacher, lover and protector all in one person.

It also explained why she had cleaved so strongly to Logan, and if he even suspected after seeing the scar on her shoulder, why Logan had let her, why concern for her intruded so often into his thoughts that it was palpable to Professor X.

And now, Victor was in the X-Mansion, he was professing to have turned over a new leaf, and all of the sudden it must have seemed to Rogue that there was no reason that she and Creed should be parted any longer.

Or, possibly, she had come to the sobering realisation that no matter whether they were on opposite sides, no matter that there was much in Victor Creed that was brutal, and evil, that the bond between them was unbreakable, and that to continue to deny its existence was folly.

"Till death to us part. And what God has joined, let no man put asunder." Professor X mused.

He put his head on his desk for a moment.

Charles knew he had to do something, but he wasn't sure what it was.

He was still sitting behind his desk, pondering, when there was a knock on his door.

It was Logan.

"Enter, Logan. I have a feeling that we have something to talk about."

Logan came in and sat down in front of Charles Xavier's desk.

Professor X put an ashtray in front of him.

"I see you've been thinkin' about what I've been thinkin' about, Charlie?"

"Logan, it would be wonderful if you could tell me that I am wrong. But, I think that Rogue is, well, inextricably bound to Victor Creed, and he to her, insofar as he has physically marked her."

Logan lit a cigar.

"Sorry, Charlie. You got it in one."

"What does the mark mean?"

"It means that she's his. An' when I say that, it ain't some kinda hearts and flowers kinda thing. Vic put that mark on my women he's killed to spite me. And he only put it on one living woman I know of. If he puts his mark onna woman, that's Vic's mate. Yunno, in every animalistic sense of the term. He'd kill for her, and she's his woman so she's his responsibility. When she came here, Creed asked me to look after her. Because I'm his brother. And with Rogue, he made sure to imprint his powers on her so she'll be a feral until the day she dies. He learned from the last one. And since she's got his powers, the only way she'll ever die is if he kills her. That mark means Rogue belongs to Sabretooth till death do they part. They may argue, an' fight, an' there may be years, decades, even, when they ain't speakin', but you can't turn back the clock on this, Charlie."

"And you knew about this when Rogue came here?"

"I was afraid you wouldn't take her in. I hate to ever let these words come outa my mouth, but, for once, I agreed with my sunnuvabitch brother. Rogue didn't belong in the Brotherhood."

"Logan, do you think she even understands what she's done?"

"Yeah, I do. I mean, young as she is, she can't think in terms of decades, but she knows. The only reason she covered up that mark was because she thought that abandoning the Brotherhood meant abandoning Creed. An' prob'ly Magneto an' Mystique, too. That's the part she don't understand. The complicated part. Right now, she's just so damn happy that she's not alone, an' she's got her man a staircase an' a hallway away, she's over the fuckin' moon. She has no idea the world of shit that's waitin' for her, but, when it comes, I don't think she'll care. Love's funny that way."

Professor Xavier frowned.

"I must admit, Logan, I don't know what to do. Of course, it could only be positive for Rogue to reconnect with the man she loves, who has sworn to protect her life with his, and with her stepmother and her stepfather, who were more her parents than her natural parents ever were. I would never advise a student to give up family or love, just for the sake of being an X-Man. But, Magneto and Mystique are Rogue's family, and Sabretooth is her beau. How can we be sure she will maintain her relationships to Erik, Raven and Viktor, without returning to Magneto, Mystique, and the Brotherhood?"

Professor X did not get the answer he expected.

"It's simple, Charlie. Victor's a bad man. Worse than you know. He was always a born killer and a violent son of a bitch. But he was more man than animal, when he was younger. Until the death of his wife. Matsuko, back in the early fifties. Since then, he's had no reason to be anything but a mad animal, and he's buried the man in him under an ocean of blood and a mountain of corpses. But there's somethin' about Rogue that's made him want to dig into that pile and see if he can't find that little scrap of humanity he had to begin with. That's why he came in fro the cold, no matter what he says to the contrary. So, he'd rather die than see Rogue on the other side of the cape. See, he didn't entrust her to you. He entrusted her to me. And I know why. That life nearly killed her, and anybody who tries to drag her back into it, Vic will make sure they're chokin' on their own blood an' toastin' in hell before he'll let 'em do it. An' that goes double for Mystique and Magneto. It was a committee decision, havin' Rogue come over to our side. "

"What happened, Logan? What brought Rogue to us that I don't know about?"

Logan stood up.

"Would you try and understand when I tell you that I can't tell you that? At least, not yet."

"If that's the case, Logan, I'll wait."

**Westchester, New York, X-Institute, 1970**

**III: Rogue**

I didn't have to pretend to be irate that Victor had spilled iced tea all over me, and I wasn't too happy to see him when he barged into my room while I was in my bathroom, in my bra and panties, trying to wash the tea stains out of my skirt and shirt in the sink.

"You need any help with that, Stripe?" he leered.

Sometimes, I swear Victor thinks that life really is like a dirty movie.

I poured a little more Woolite into the warm, soapy water.

"Goddamnit, Victor, why don't you just take out an ad in the paper and announce that you and I are together! You did that deliberately, and then, that bit with the towel, that wouldn't have fooled an idiot, let alone a telepath?"

Then, he laughed at me in that way that makes me want to claw one of his eyes out.

"Baby, what you are is paranoid. Scooter's occupyin' the TV watchin' some shitty show. You still got that beer I put in your fridge…no, fuck that, I think I'll have a glass of wine."

Then, while I was standing there, washing my clothes, I remembered the occasion of buying them.

Mama and I had gone shopping, in the Village, and I saw the multi-tiered skirt on the mannequin in the window.

With the beige babydoll jersey that tied around the waist, and a matching beige floppy hat, with a wide hatband the same color and design as the skirt.

It was one of the last times we were together, and it was what I was wearing the last time I saw Papa.

Running out of the brownstone to meet Liv Napier, who was honking her horn for me.

Papa stopped me at the door, and he had my purse in his hand.

"Don't forget your purse, Rogue. Trivelino probably only has five dollars and a condom in her pockets. Call if something terrible happens. I won't be angry."

I thought back in my mind, as I wrung out the skirt and shirt, and hung them over the shower curtain bar to dry, how long it had been.

Two years.

I sat down, on the bathmat, in my bra and my panties, and put my face in my hands, and started to cry.

I was embarrassed to cry at all, let alone cry in front of Victor, but I couldn't seem to stop.

I heard him calling my name from the doorway, but I didn't want to lift my head.

He was good enough not to say anything to me; Victor just held me close against his body while I cried.

And cried.

And cried.

Finally, I had cried myself out, and I looked at him through my bleary eyes.

I must have been a terrible sight, my eyes all puffy and my face all red and blotchy from weeping.

"I was just thinking about Mama and Papa. Are they doing alright? Have you seen them?"

"Yeah, I have. I was workin' for your Old Man, for awhile. Nothin's changed. They talk about you, all the has a scrapbook he pastes your press clippings in. He's pretty sure someday he'll have a box of them, just like the Joker does about Red. But what they can't figure out, Erik and Raven, is how Red sees her father all the time, without goin' over to the other side, and you've never even called."

"Are they mad at me?"

"Mad's not a good word for it. More like impatient. Impatient for you to grow up and realise that your family is your family, no matter who signs your paycheck and what color costume you wear."

I thought about it.

Victor's return to my life hadn't made me long to jump back over to the other side of the cape, and he hadn't tried to entice me there.

Out of our costumes, we are just people, after all, aren't we?

Well?

Aren't we?


End file.
